She shook her head. "I am going back to England in June," she said, "and I never expect to come back."
"Do you mean that you never want to come back?"
Jane shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I might possibly return to travel about sometime," she admitted, her mind reverting to Mr. Towles's parting words. "I am very fond of travel."
"So am I," he said somewhat ruefully, "but I fear I'll not do much of it for some years to come."
Jane's eyes remained pensively fixed upon the opposite shore. She was apparently quite indifferent to Mr. Everett's future prospects, and after a short pause, which he devoted to a careful study of the girl's clear profile, he observed tentatively: "I hope you'll not lay it up against Margaret—the way she treats you and all, I mean. She's really an uncommonly good sort, when one comes to know her; but, of course, she can't—I mean she doesn't understand——"
"I thought we were to forget Mrs. Belknap for this one day?" murmured Jane, with a little curl of her pretty lips.
He flushed uncomfortably. "What I meant to say was this: it occurred to me that it might be advisable for you to make a clean breast of the whole thing; to—to tell Margaret all about yourself and how you came to leave England, and so put yourself right. I—I wish you would, Jane."
She fixed her clear eyes upon him thoughtfully. "It has occurred to me, too," she said; "but—there is really no need to say anything to Mrs. Belknap. I shall try to do my work as well as I can while I am in her house; after that,"—she paused, then went on deliberately—"I shall go away, and that will be the end of it."