money on these drafts and forwarded it, without fee, to the sick young brother who would never walk again, the adored young brother who had fallen prey to the most cruel of all enemies: infantile paralysis.
Jane Thorne was the only daughter of the Earl of Wexham, who shot himself in London when the girl was but twelve years old. He left a penniless widow and two children. Wexham Manor, with all its fields and forests, had been sacrified beforehand by the reckless, ill-advised nobleman. The police found a half-crown in his pocket when they took charge of the body. It was the last of a once imposing fortune. The widow and children subsisted on the charity of a niggardly relative. With the death of the former, aften ten unhappy years as a dependent, Jane resolutely refused to accept help from the obnoxious relative. She set out to earn a living for herself and the crippled boy. We find her, after two years of struggle and privation, installed as Miss Emsdale in the Smith-Parvis mansion, earning one hundred dollars a month.
It is safe to say that if the Smith-Parvises had known that she was the daughter of an Earl, and that her brother was an Earl, there would have been great rejoicing among them; for it isn't everybody who can boast an Earl's daughter as governess.
One night in each week she was free to do as she pleased. It was, in plain words, her night out. She invariably spent it with the Marchioness and the coterie of unmasked spirits from lands across the seas.
What was she to say to Mrs. Smith-Parvis if called upon to account for her unconventional return of the night before? How could she explain? Her lips were
