"There are at least two reasons why you should have stopped at home for every one you can give for running away," he said deliberately.
"But I didn't run away!" denied Jane crossly. "I—I just went. Aunt Agatha meant to send me somewhere because she hates me, I verily believe. I preferred to go."
"Nevertheless you should have stayed," he said gently. "Your position in life demanded patience and—er—pardon me—self-control. You exercised neither, it seems, and now—" His expressive look pointed the moral.
Jane winced under the prick of it. "How did you ever find me?" she asked, after a long pause filled with industrious stitching on the brown towel.
"I saw an account of the smuggling episode in an American newspaper," he said coolly. "Then, quite naturally, I looked up Miss Forbes at the customs department, and she gave me your address. It was surprisingly simple, you see, though it might easily have been far otherwise."
Jane bent her crimson face over her work. Her needle snapped in her trembling fingers. "I—I didn't know about that dreadful woman," she said in a low, shamed voice. "I supposed she was going to travel in America. How could I have known!"
Mr. Towle bent forward, his melancholy gray eyes filled with the warm light of pity and that deeper feeling to which it is said to be akin. "Poor little girl," he said in a deep voice, which fell upon Jane's ears like a caress. "You couldn't have known, of course. And I say it's all a beastly shame—the way they have treated you and all. Won't you let me take care of you after this, Jane? You shall never suffer so again."
Jane tried to answer; but somehow the words refused to come.
"Let me take you away from all this," he pleaded. "Won't you, dear?"
At this moment Master Belknap slowly climbed up the steps. "My neck is hot," he said seriously, "an' I want a dwink of water."