answered.
"I--I was all ready to come that day and--and--then I couldn't."

She buried her face in her hands at the memory of it and burst into
tears.

"Is it true that Hunter won't take you anywhere?" he asked pointedly.

"You have been listening to the Cranes," she answered.

"I've been listenin' t' more'n them," he said with the fixed purpose of
drawing her out on the subject. "I've been listenin' t' some as says
you're too high and mighty t' associate with th' likes of us--an' I've
heard it said that your husband won't take you nowhere. Now I just
naturally know that a man can't shut a woman up in this American country,
so's she can't go anywhere she wants t', if she wants t' bad enough; an' I
remember how Hunter was 'fore 'e married you; 'e was always on th' go--an'
there's a nigger in th' woodpile somewheres."

Elizabeth was for the moment staggered. What he said was so true. And yet,
how untrue! It was hard to think with the eye of suspicion on her.
Appearances were against her, but she was determined not to discuss the
privacies of her married life. She paused and looked Nathan squarely in
the face till she could control her reasoning faculties.

"That is neither here nor there," she said quite firmly at last. "I shall
not defend myself to you, Uncle Nate, nor explain away bad reports. It
would not help me and it would not help you. What I am here for is to
offer you my love _now_. What I want you to believe is that I mean it,
that I've wanted to come, that I'm here because I want to be here, and
that I never mean to neglect you again. I--I couldn't come to see
her--but, oh, Uncle Nate, mayn't I come to see you? I can't tell you all
the little ins and outs of why I haven't come before, but you must believe
me."

Elizabeth ended imploringly.

The man was softened by her evident sincerity in spite of himself, and yet
his wound was of long standing, his belief in her honesty shaken, his
beloved wife in her grave, assisted to her final stroke by this girl's
neglect, and he could not lay his bitterness aside easily. He did not
speak.

The silence which followed was broken only by the ticking of the
old-fashioned Seth Thomas clock and the roar of the fire.

Elizabeth looked around the familiar room in her dilemma, entangled in the
mesh of her loyalty to her husband's dubious and misleading actions.
Nearly every article in that room was associated with some tender
recollection in the girl's mind. Not even t