one has slandered me," he said, with an
air of virtue.

"No. No one." Mrs. Lancaster turned her rings with a little
embarrassment. She was trying to muster the courage to speak plainly to
him. He gave it to her.

"Oh, yes; some one has. I think I have a right to demand who it is. Is
it that man Keith?"

"No." She glanced at him with a swift flash in her eye. "Mr. Keith has
not mentioned your name to me since I came home."

Her tone fired him with jealousy.

"Well, who was it, then? He is not above it. He hates me enough to say
anything. He has never got over our buying his old place, and has never
lost an opportunity to malign me since."

She looked him in the face, for the first time, quite steadily.

"Let me tell you, Mr. Keith has never said a word against you to me--and
that is much more than I can say for you; so you need not be
maligning him now."

A faint flush stole into Wickersham's face.

"You appear to be championing his cause very warmly."

"Because he is a friend of mine and an honorable gentleman."

He gave a hard, bitter laugh.

"Women are innocent!"

"It is more than men are" she said, fired, as women always are, by a
fleer at the sex.

"Who has been slandering me?" he demanded, angered suddenly by her
retort. "I have stood in a relation to you which gives me a right to
demand the name."

"What relation to me?--Where is your wife?"

His face whitened, and he drew in his breath as if struck a blow,--a
long breath,--but in a second he had recovered himself, and he burst
into a laugh.

"So you have heard that old story--and believe it?" he said, with his
eyes looking straight into hers. As she made no answer, he went on.
"Now, as you have heard it, I will explain the whole thing to you. I
have always wanted to do it; but--but--I hardly knew whether it were
better to do it or leave it alone. I thought if you had heard it you
would mention it to me--"

"I have done so now," she said coldly.

"I thought our relation--or, as you object to that word, our
friendship--entitled me to that much from you."

"I never heard it till--till just now," she defended, rather shaken by
his tone and air of candor.

"When?

"Oh--very recently."

"Won't you tell me who told you?"

"No--o. Go on."

"Well, that woman--that poor girl--her name was--her name is--Phrony
Tripper--or Trimmer. I think that was her name--she called herself
Euphronia Tripper." He was trying with puckered brow to recall