Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/93

 grew larger and larger and more and more earnest toward the end of the letter.

And much later that night, when she was supposed to be sensibly asleep in bed, Jane woke in the moonlight and got up. She took the blankets from her bed and went cautiously downstairs with them. She curled herself up on the davenport and turned her face to the lovely lost ship. The moonlight shimmered through the small long panes and silvered the sails. So Jane slept.

I wish I could record that simultaneously with the return of the Fortune of the Indies came a turn in the fortunes of the Ingrams. This, however, was not the case. Each young Ingram nursed a wholly secret and somewhat shamefaced hope that this might be so, and that a hitherto unknown relative might die in India, leaving to them several thousand lakhs of rupees or a few rubies as large as hens' eggs. No such news reached them, unfortunately, and the ship merely continued to hang above the mantel in a proud sort of state, holding her secret, if she had one, with praiseworthy silence. She was religiously dusted each day by her