This praiseworthy resolution shone keenly in her blue eyes when Jane encountered them next. Behind the resolution lurked a question. Jane answered it by asking another. "I fear you are not satisfied with my work, Mrs. Belknap," she said meekly. Somehow or other, without exactly knowing why, she had become increasingly solicitous about pleasing this pretty, clear-eyed young matron, who, it might have seemed, was not so difficult to please. "Why, yes, Jane," Mrs. Belknap answered hesitatingly, "I _am_ pleased with your work. You are really very neat about your sweeping and dusting, now that I have taught you how"--this with a complacent tilt of her brown head--"and you really manage surprisingly well with Buster. I think he positively likes you--_the darling_! But----" Jane waited the outcome of that "but" with a sinking heart. Mrs. Belknap was gazing at her hand-maiden's downcast, faintly blushing face with searching eyes. "Jane," she said at last, "Mary has given me warning." "Do you mean that Mary is going to leave you, ma'am?" Mrs. Belknap sighed involuntarily. "Yes; that is what I mean. I was so sorry, Jane, to hear from Mary that you two cannot live peaceably in the same house. And then----" "What else did Mary say about me, Mrs. Belknap?" demanded Jane with kindling eyes. "She said---. O Jane, how can I tell you? You _seem_ such a nice girl!" "I _seem_--yes, madam; but you think I am not what I seem. Well, I am not. I ought not to be doing the work of a servant in this house. I ought never to have come here." Jane threw back her pretty head and stared at Mrs. Belknap from under level lids. Mrs. Belknap returned the look with one of startled interest. She had recalled the smuggling episode. "What--do you mean, Jane?" she asked. "You are not----" "I am a lady," said English Jane haughtily; "and so I do not belong in anyone's servant's hall. That is what I mean." "Oh!--_a lady_!" repeated Mrs. Belknap, and she smiled. "Everyone who works out in America is 'a lady.' We who employ servants are simply women. But perhaps you did not know that, Jane." She remembered her brother's emphatic assertions, and added kindly: "I have noticed Jane, that you appear somewhat above your station. But you should remember that honest work never hurts anyone's real character. Character is marred by--by something quite different. When one allows oneself to be tempted to--to take what belongs to another, for instance." "Do you mean, Mrs. Belknap, that you think _I_ stole the things you have missed?" demanded Jane, her hazel eyes darting fire. "Did that wicked Mary say _that_ to you? Yes; I see that she did. And you"--with bitter anger and scorn quite impossible to convey--"believed it!" Mrs. Belknap appeared to grow small in her chair under the direct light of the girl's indignant eyes. "I--I do not _accuse_ you of anything," she faltered. "I wish above all things to be just to everybody concerned."