"I don't want to," he answered, bluntly.

I raised my eyebrows.

"You are very rude," I told him.

"I beg your pardon. I did not mean to be. As a rule I detest women almost as much as they detest me. I do not think that your sister would interest me."

"She does a great deal of good," I said. "She is managing the whole parish while my father is ill."

"I have no doubt she is very useful in her way," he answered, indifferently.

"She is much better tempered than I am," I added.

"I have no doubt about that," he answered, with a smile.

"But I don't think that she could have bandaged your dog's leg as well as I did," I said.

He looked at me with a sudden new thoughtfulness.

"That was the first time I spoke to you," he remarked. "It seems a long time ago."

"One measures time by events," I said.

"And that," he replied, quickly, "was a great event. I am not likely to forget it. I shall never forget it."

I laughed.

"Not such a great event after all as the coming of the heroine of your romance," I said. "How interesting it must have been to meet her again!"

"Rubbish!" he exclaimed, testily.

I shrugged my shoulders and turned towards the house.

"You are very rude," I declared. "I am going in."

He looked into my face and was rea.s.sured.

"I wish from the bottom of my heart that she had never come here," he groaned. "G.o.d knows I would send her away if I had the power."

"I only wish that you could," I answered, sadly. "She is like a bird of ill-omen. She looks at me out of those big black eyes as if she hated me. I believe I am getting to be afraid of her. Do you think that she will really stay here more than a day or two?"

He nodded his head gloomily.

"I believe so," he answered.

"You see what responsibility the rescuer of young maidens in distress incurs," I remarked, spitefully.

"I wish," he said, looking at me steadily, "that I had let that carriage go to the bottom of the precipice."

"They would have been killed!" I cried.

"Exactly," he remarked, grimly.

"You are very wicked to think of such a thing," I said.

"I am only living up to my reputation, then," he answered. "That is what my G.o.dmamma told you about me, isn't it?"

"I shall not stay with you a moment longer," I declared, ignoring the latter part of his sentence, and laying my hand upon the gate.

"Won't you--shake hands before you go?" he asked.

I hesitated. His request was gruff and his tone implied rather a command than a favor. But I looked up at him, and I saw that he was in earnest.

So I held out my hand and we parted friends.

CHAPTER XIX

A CORNER OF THE CURTAIN

A note was brought in to me at luncheon time, addressed in a bold yet delicate feminine hand which was already becoming familiar. It was from Adelaide Fortress, and it consisted of a single line only--

"Will you come to me this afternoon?--A.F."

I went to see her without any hesitation. She was sitting alone in her room, and something in her greeting seemed to denote that she was not altogether at her ease. Yet she was glad to see me.

"Sit down, child," she said. "I have been thinking about you all day. I am glad that you came."

"Not very cheerful thoughts, then, I am afraid," I remarked, with a certain half-unconscious sympathy in my tone. For her face was white and drawn, as though she had spent a sleepless night and an anxious morning.

"Not very," she admitted. "I have been thinking about you ever since you left me yesterday. I am sorry for you. I am sorry for all of us. It was an evil chance that brought that South American girl here."

"Was she born in South America?" I asked, with pointless curiosity.

"I do not know," she answered. "I should think so. She told me that she had spent most of her life there. A girl who dresses as she does here, and wears diamonds in the morning, must have come from some outlandish place. Her toilette is not for our benefit, however."

I looked up inquiringly. She continued, with a slight frown upon her face--

"She follows Bruce Deville about everywhere. I never saw anything so atrociously barefaced. If he were her husband she could not claim more from him. They have just gone by together now."

"What! this afternoon?" I asked.

"Not a quarter of an hour ago," she declared. "She was holding his arm, and looking up at him with her great black eyes every moment. Bah! such a woman gives one a bad taste in one's mouth."

"I wonder that Mr. Deville is not rude to her," I remarked. "He does not seem to be a man likely to be particularly amiable under the circ.u.mstances. I should not think he would be very easily annexed."