“Mercy, no! Where would a poor body like me get a hundred dollars, or even a hundred cents ahead, making a living by her needle?” she exclaimed, prudently ignoring a little hoard, Leon Lyndon’s gift to her, that she had laid by for the future “rainy day” that must come to all the poor in sickness or trouble.
Doyle looked disappointed and muttered to himself that he was sorry he had taken the trouble of coming since he couldn’t wheedle any funds out of the old woman.
His disappointed gaze roved over the floor and he saw almost at his feet an exquisitely embroidered handkerchief. Picking it up, he read aloud the name in the corner:
“Lisa Chanler!”
“Why, that must be Miss Lyndon’s handkerchief. She went off in such a hurry she forgot it—a young girl that was staying with me, you know,” explanatorily.
Carey Doyle looked up with quick interest, for the name touched a chord in memory, and brought back a face that had charmed him with its beauty and enraged him with its pride.
He remembered that Jessie Lyndon was dead—that he had heard a strange story of how she had been found dead in the snow and acknowledged as the stolen daughter of a grand, rich woman on Fifth Avenue; then he had put her out of his thoughts and married the pawnbroker’s daughter, Yetta Stein, leading a cat-and-dog existence, quarreling, till a week ago, when he had left her, swearing that New York was not large enough to hold them both, and that he would start to Alaska next day. He meant what he said, and was raising all the cash he could for the long, perilous journey.
But the name of Lyndon still held a charm for him that roused his curiosity, making him question his stepmother about her guest until she told all she knew about Jessie, from almost two years ago till now.
“And only think of being burned up in the middle of the ocean! All one’s clothes, I mean—and escaping without a rag to one’s back, or a dollar in one’s purse!” she added vaguely, continuing:
“That fine handkerchief you see was given her by a Miss Chanler, one of the passengers—and her other clothes, too, for, as I said, she hadn’t a rag to her back, poor girl!”