The examination of the model took place on Tuesday. On the Saturday following, Dr. Bowdler was summoned to his back parlor to see a man and woman who had called. Going in, he found Andy, clad as before in his dress-suit of blue coat and marvellously plaid trousers, balancing himself uneasily on the edge of his chair, and a woman in Quaker dress beside him. Her face and presence attracted the Doctor at once, strongly, though they were evidently those of an uneducated working-woman. The quietude in her motions and expression, the repressed power, the delicacy, had worked out, from within, to carve her sad face into those fine lines he saw. No outside culture could do that. She spoke, too, with that simple directness that belongs to people who are sure of what they have to do in the world.
"I came to see if thee knew anything of my husband: thee was so kind to him some days ago. I am Jane Starke."
The Doctor comprehended in a moment. He watched the deserted wife curiously, as he answered her.
"No, my dear Madam. Is it possible he is not with you? I went to his lodging twice with my niece, and, finding it vacant, concluded that he had returned to you, or gone with our young friend Andrew here."
"He is not with me."
She rose, her fingers twitching nervously at her bonnet-strings.
"She was so dead sure you would know," said Andy, rising also. "We've been on the search for four days. We thought you would know. Where will you go now, Jane?"
The woman lost every trace of color when Dr. Bowdler answered her, but she showed no other sign of her disappointment.
"We will find him somewhere, Andrew."
"Stop, stop," interrupted the Doctor. "Tell me what you have done. You must not go in this way."