ce but she did not see it.

"We do not speak of the absent when the present holds all we care for,"
he said lightly.

She took no notice of this, but went on: "I do not think you would
wittingly injure any one."

He laughed softly. "Injure any one? Why, of course I would not--I could
not. My life is spent in making people have a pleasant time--though some
are wicked enough to malign me."

"Well," she said slowly, "I do not think you ought to come to Cousin
Louise's so often. You ought not to pay Cousin Louise as much attention
as you do."

"What!" He threw back his head and laughed.

"You do not know what an injury you are doing her," she continued
gravely. "You cannot know how people are talking about it?"

"Oh, don't I?" he laughed. Then, as out of the tail of his eye he saw
her troubled face, he stopped and made his face grave. "And you think I
am injuring her!" She did notice the covert cynicism.

"I am sure you are--unwittingly. You do not know how unhappy she is."

An expression very like content stole into his dark eyes.

Lois continued:

"She has not been wise. She has been foolish and unyielding and--oh, I
hate to say anything against her, for she has been very kind to me!--She
has allowed others to make trouble between her and her husband; but she
loves him dearly for all that--and--"

"Oh, she does! You think so!" said Wickersham, with an ugly little gleam
under his half-closed lids and a shrewd glance at Lois.

"Yes. Oh, yes, I am sure of it. I know it. She adores him."

"She does, eh?"

"Yes. She would give the world to undo what she has done and win him
back."

"She would, eh?" Again that gleam in Wickersham's dark eyes as they
slanted a glance at the girl's earnest face.

"I think she had no idea till--till lately how people talked about her,
and it was a great shock to her. She is a very proud woman, you know?"

"Yes," he assented, "quite proud."

"She esteems you--your friendship--and likes you ever so much, and all
that." She was speaking rapidly now, her sober eyes on Wickersham's face
with an appealing look in them. "And she doesn't want to do anything
to--to wound you; but I think you ought not to come so often or see her
in a way to make people talk--and I thought I'd say so to you." A smile
that was a plea for sympathy flickered in her eyes.

Wickersham's mind had been busy. This explained the change in Louise
Wentworth's manner of late--ever since he had made the bold dec