"So am I!" echoed John Everett fervently.
Bertha Forbes caught herself smiling. "Such foolish escapades frequently turn out quite otherwise," she said severely. "The question—now that this young person has been 'found,' so to speak—is what do Messrs. Thorn, Nagle & Noyes want with her?"
"They wish me to return to England—to Aunt Agatha," Jane was positive.
"You'll not go, Jane," whispered John Everett.
Bertha Forbes caught the whisper. "She may be obliged to go," she said curtly. "You must leave her for the present, young man, in my care. Communicate with your London lawyers and find out the particulars. Your plans for Jane's future are so extremely recent that they will bear deferring a bit, I fancy."
When John Everett went away at last, after bidding his sweetheart good night under the coldly impersonal eyes of Miss Forbes, he walked on air. And for exactly six days thereafter he was the happiest man on earth. On the seventh day arrived a cablegram from Messrs. Thorn, Nagle & Noyes, which read as follows: "Return Aubrey-Blythe next steamer. Sole heir to uncle's estate."
Jane shook her head when she heard this.
"Impossible," she said at first. "I have no uncle except Uncle Robert." Later she recalled the dim memory of a younger brother, one Foxhall Aubrey-Blythe, a wild scapegrace of a fellow, who had been bred to the army, sent to South Africa in the Zulu wars, and lost sight of by his family. "It was thought," she said soberly, "that he was killed, though his death was never reported in the despatches. He was officially starred and labeled 'missing'."
"He has evidently turned up again," said John Everett gloomily. "That is to say, he has been heard of again as rich and dead; and you are his heiress."
"It may not be much," said Jane Blythe thoughtfully. "I suppose," she added, "that I must go back to England. But I shall not stay there."