know that Ailsa
Paige had been to Paigecourt, did you?"

"When?"

"Recently. . . . She's another fine woman. She never had an
illness worse than whooping cough. I know because I've always been
her physician. Normally she's a fine, wholesome woman,
Berkley--but she told a falsehood. . . . You are not the only liar
south of Dixon's damnable Line!"

Berkley straightened up as though shot, and the doctor dropped a
heavy hand on his shoulder.

"The sort of lie you told, Phil, is the kind she told. It doesn't
concern you or me; it's between her conscience and herself; and
it's in a good safe place. . . . And now I'll sketch out for you
what she did. This--this beast, Hallam, wrote to Miss Dix at
Washington and preferred charges against Miss Lynden. . . . I'm
trying to speak calmly and coherently and without passion, damn it!
Don't interrupt me. . . . I say that Hallam sent his written
evidence to Miss Dix; and Ailsa Paige learned of it, and learned
also what the evidence was. . . . And it was a terrible thing for
her to learn, Phil--a damnable thing for a woman to learn."

He tightened his grasp on Berkley's shoulder, and his voice was not
very steady.

"To believe those charges--that evidence--meant the death of her
faith in you. . . . As for the unhappy revelation of what Miss
Lynden had been--the evidence was hopelessly conclusive. Imagine
what she thought! Any other woman would have sat aloof and let
justice brand the woman who had doubly betrayed her. I want you to
consider it; every instinct of loyalty, friendship, trust, modesty
had apparently been outraged and trampled on by the man she had
given her heart to, and by the woman she had made a friend. That
was the position in which Ailsa Paige found herself when she
learned of these charges, saw the evidence, and was informed by
Hallam that he had forwarded his complaint."

His grip almost crushed Berkley's shoulder muscles.

"And now I'll tell you what Ailsa Paige did. She went before Miss
Dix and told her that there was not one atom of truth in the
charges. She accounted for every date specified by saying that
Miss Lynden was with her at those times, that she had known her
intimately for years, known her family--that it was purely a case
of mistaken identity, which, if ever pressed, would bewilder her
friend, who was neither sufficiently experienced to understand what
such charges meant, nor strong enough to endure the horror and
shock