"You hurt my hand."

Jeff dropped it instantly. Miss Mayfield put it in the pocket of her
sacque for security. Besides, it had been so bekissed that it seemed
unpleasantly conscious.

"I wish you would tell me all about yourself," she went on, with a
certain charming feminine submission of manner quite unlike her ordinary
speech; "I should like to help you. Perhaps I can. You know I am quite
independent; I mean--"

She paused, for Jeff's face betrayed no signs of sympathetic following.

"I mean I am what people call rich in my own right. I can do as I please
with my own. If any of your trouble, Mr. Jeff, arises from want of
money, or capital; if any consideration of that kind takes you away from
your home; if I could save you THAT TROUBLE, and find for you--perhaps a
little nearer--that which you are seeking, I would be so glad to do
it. You will find the world very wide, and very cold, Mr. Jeff," she
continued, with a certain air of practical superiority quite natural
to her, but explicable to her friends and acquaintances only as the
consciousness of pecuniary independence; "and I wish you would be frank
with me. Although I am a woman, I know something of business."

"I will be frank with you, miss," said Jeff, turning a colorless face
upon her. "If you was ez rich as the Bank of California, and could throw
your money on any fancy or whim that struck you at the moment; if you
felt you could buy up any man and woman in California that was willing
to be bought up; and if me and my aunt were starving in the road, we