I'll have the jewels ready very shortly, and Matilda will be in to help you as soon as she is through arranging with the servants." "Why, Cousin Caroline, what is it about Jack ?" burst out Olivetta with an excited flutter after Miss Gardner had gone into the bedroom.

"I hadn't heard anything of it before! Has--has anything happened to him ?" Olivetta, an intimate, a relative, and a worshipful inferior, was one of the few persons with whom Mrs.De Peyster could bring herself to unbend and be confidential.

"That is what I do not know.

About a week ago Jack suddenly disappeared--" "Disappeared!" "Oh, he left a note, telling me not to worry.

But not a word has been heard from him since.