Aleck listened sympathetically.  “A sad case!  And what is the name, if I may ask, of the young man who is so ill?”

“Lor’, I don’t know,” said Sallie.  “The new mistress, her name’s Redmond; some kin of Parson Thayer’s, and she’s got this house and a lot of money.  The lawyer was here yesterday and got the will all fixed up.  She’s a singer, too—­one of those opery singers down below, she is.”

Sallie made this announcement as if she was relating a bewildering blow of Providence for which she herself was not responsible.  Aleck, who began to fear that he might be the recipient of more confidences than decorum dictated, hastily proffered his next question.

“Can I see the lady, Miss Redmond?  Or is it Mrs. Redmond?”

Sallie gave a scornful, injured sniff.

“Miss Redmond, sir, though she’s old enough to be a Mrs. I wouldn’t so much mind her coming in here and using the parson’s china that I always washed with my own hands if she was a Mrs. But what can she, an unmarried woman and an opery singer, know about Parson Thayer’s ways and keeping this house in order, when I’ve been with him going on seventeen years and he took me outer the Home when I was no more than a child?”

Aleck’s heart would have been stone had he resisted this all but passionate plea.

“You have been faithfulness itself, I am sure.  But do you think Miss Redmond would see me, at least for a few minutes?”

Sallie recovered her dignity, which had been near a collapse in tears, and assumed her official tone.  “I don’t know as you can, and I don’t know as you can.  She’s sick, too; fell overboard somehow or other, offer one of those pesky boats, and got neuralagy and I don’t know what all.  But I’ll go and see how she’s feeling.”

“Stay, wait a minute,” said Aleck, seized with a new thought.  “I’ll write a message to Miss Redmond and then she’ll know just what I want.  If you’ll be so good as to take it to her?”

“Why, certainly, of course I will,” Said Sallie Kingsbury.  “Only you needn’t take all that trouble.  I can tell her what you want myself.”  Sallie was one of those persons who regard the pen as the weapon of last resort, not to be used until necessity compels.  But Aleck continued writing on a blank leaf of his note-book.  The message was this: 

“Can you give me any information concerning my cousin, James Hambleton, who was thought to be aboard the Jeanne D’Arc?”

He tore the leaf out, extracted a card from his pocketbook, and handed leaf and card to Sallie.  “Will you please give those to Miss Redmond?”

Sallie wiped her hands, which were perfectly clean, on her white apron, took the card and bit of paper and departed, sniffing audibly.  When she returned, it was to say, with a slightly more interested air, that Miss Redmond wished to see him up-stairs.  She stood at the bottom of the wide stairway and pointed to a corner of the upper floor.  “She’s in there—­room on the right!” and so she stalked off to the kitchen.