"Oh, I've nothing else!" protested Jane, "and Mrs. Markle is waiting for me; I see her now."
"Where?" demanded the official, keenly alert. "Point her out to me!"
"The large lady yonder with the long cloak—. Oh, she is looking at me now! I am afraid she will be displeased about the lace. But of course, I had to tell you when you asked me."
"Of course!" echoed the man, with a sneer, "the ladies are always careful to tell me everything of the sort. Now, you'll go with this woman; she'll look into your case. And I'll just step across and speak to Mrs. Markle."
The next hour in Jane Blythe's history is best passed over in pitying silence. At the end of it a pallid, tremulous girl was confronting a stern-faced official to whom she related in detail the circumstances of her short acquaintance with Mrs. Markle.
"She asked you to leave your hat and jacket in her cabin, did she?" he interrupted sharply, at one point in the narrative.
"She said it was too thin for the sea," Jane told him. "She was very kind and loaned me a warm cloak lined with fur."
"Did you notice anything peculiar about your own jacket when you put it on to leave the ship?"
"No, sir," said Jane; "I was too much taken up with having reached America to notice that it was thicker and lumpy in spots."