then, I think I would have strangled him with
my hands, out of pure hate.

"Did you marry him?" I demanded. My voice sounded hoarse and strange in
my ears. "That's all I want to know. Did you marry him?"

"No."

I drew a long breath.

"You--cared about him?"

She hesitated.

"No," she said finally. "I did not care about him."

I sat down on the edge of the boat and mopped my hot face. I was
heartily ashamed of myself, and mingled with my abasement was a great
relief. If she had not married him, and had not cared for him, nothing
else was of any importance.

"I was sorry, of course, the moment the train had started, but I had
wired I was coming, and I could not go back, and then when I got there,
the place was charming. There were no neighbors, but we fished and rode
and motored, and--it was moonlight, like this."

I put my hand over both of hers, clasped in her lap. "I know," I
acknowledged repentantly, "and--people do queer things when it is
moonlight. The moon has got me to-night, Alison. If I am a boor,
remember that, won't you?"

Her fingers lay quiet under mine. "And so," she went on with a little
sigh, "I began to think perhaps I cared. But all the time I felt that
there was something not quite right. Now and then Mrs. Curtis would say
or do something that gave me a queer start, as if she had dropped a mask
for a moment. And there was trouble with the servants; they were almost
insolent. I couldn't understand. I don't know when it dawned on me that
the old Baron Cavalcanti had been right when he said they were not my
kind of people. But I wanted to get away, wanted it desperately."

"Of course, they were not your kind," I cried. "The man was married! The
girl Jennie, a housemaid, was a spy in Mrs. Sullivan's employ. If he had
pretended to marry you I would have killed him! Not only that, but the
man he murdered, Harrington, was his wife's father. And I'll see
him hang by the neck yet if it takes every energy and every penny I
possess."

I could have told her so much more gently, have broken the shock
for her; I have never been proud of that evening on the sand. I was
alternately a boor and a ruffian--like a hurt youngster who passes the
blow that has hurt him on to his playmate, that both may bawl together.
And now Alison sat, white and cold, without speech.

"Married!" she said finally, in a small voice. "Why, I don't think it
is possible, is it? I--I was on my way to Baltimore to marry him myse