His face had paled slowly. "I don't even know your name," he said quietly. "But I assure you, Miss—Jane, it has been very far from my mind to annoy you, or to——"
He stopped short and looked at her fixedly. "I must put myself right with you, Jane," he said at last. "You must listen to me."
Her low weeping suddenly ceased, and she lifted her proud little face all wet with angry tears to his. "I will listen," she said haughtily.
"I am afraid I don't altogether understand what you mean to accuse me of," he said, choosing his words carefully; "but I will tell you just why I have tried to make friends with you. I will admit that men in my station do not as a rule make friends with servant maids." He said this firmly and watched her wince under the words. "But, Jane, you are not at all like an ordinary servant. I saw that the first time I met you. I fancied that you had, somehow, stumbled out of your right place in the world, and I thought—very foolishly, no doubt—that I might help you to get back to it."
Jane's eyes kindled. "I can help myself to get back to it," she murmured, "and I will!"
"That is why I wished to help you," he went on, without paying heed to her interruption, "and I will confess to you that I came down here this afternoon on purpose to have a talk with you. I meant—" he paused to search her face gravely. "I meant to ask you to allow me to send you home to England."
"Oh, no—no!" she protested.
"Do you mean to remain in America, then?" he asked. "Are you satisfied with being a domestic servant?"
"No," she said doggedly. "I am going back when—when I have earned the money for my passage. I ought never to have come," she added bitterly. "I ought to have endured the ills I knew."