detaining you here," he said, evasively. "Let us walk on."

"No, I will not walk on. Mr. Elmendorf, I have learned to look upon you
as anything but a friend to me or mine, and I mean to be perfectly frank
with you here and now. You have slandered my friend, you have tricked
and misled my brother, you have deceived my mother, and I know well you
have sought to injure me with my employer----"

"Oh, only so far as was justifiable in the protection of my own name. As
your recommender and endorser for the position you hold, I had a right,
when you showed yourself heedless of my counsel and defiant of my
injunctions, to say to your immediate superior that he should be
cautious about allowing your intimacy with Mr. Forrest to be prosecuted
within the shelter of his sanctum and practically under his own nose.
I----"

"That's quite enough, Mr. Elmendorf. You have added insult to injury.
Once and for all, let there be an end of this. I decline any and all
communication with you from this time on." And with cheeks that lacked
no color now, and eyes all ablaze with wrath, Miss Wallen turned and
left him. But Elmendorf pursued. He had one arrow left, and meant to
send it home.

"At least I may accompany you to the corner, only twenty yards away, and
there, as you suggest, our paths shall separate. You decline to believe
my estimate of Mr. Forrest, and hold him up as something knightly and
chivalric, forsooth. My deluded friend, all the time he was making you
the object of those charming little attentions he was pressing his suit
under my own eyes at home, and, in spite of all her father, her aunt, or
her friends could do, I regret to say that Miss Florence Allison became
so infatuated as to follow that young man to his exile, and should he
ever return here it will doubtless be as her husband. Good-morning, Miss
Wallen."

She had turned from him in renewed anger and disgust as they reached the
corner, had hastened along with flaming eyes and cheeks and loudly
throbbing heart. She was furious at him for daring to speak of such
things, daring to couple Forrest's name with hers, with--anybody's. She
was ready to cry out against the man for such malignity--mendacity; and
then her cooler judgment and common sense began to reassert themselves.
Why shouldn't it be true? Why shouldn't he seek the hand of one so--so
lovely and wealthy as Miss Allison? What more natural than that Miss
Allison should learn to love him? Why shouldn't she--