hing at a time, if you please.
Positively you overwhelm me with surprise. In one breath you tell me you
are 'John Kennedy,' and then, without giving a poor girl a chance, you
say you are the owner of Goldney Park."

"But I didn't," Chesney protested. "I never said anything of the kind."

"No, but you inferred it. You say you got the idea from your uncle--I
mean the suggestion that you and I--oh, I really cannot say it."

"I'm afraid I'm but a poor dramatist after all," Chesney said lamely. "I
intended to keep that confession till after I had--but no matter. At any
rate, there is no getting away from the fact that my pen name is 'John
Kennedy.'"

"And you wrote 'Flies in Ointment'? And you have been laughing at me all
this time? You were amused because I took you for a simple countryman,
you whom men call the Sheridan of to-day! After all the pains I took
with your education."

Ethel's voice rose hysterically. Points of flame stood out from the
level of her memory of the past five weeks and scorched her. How this
man must have been amused, how consumedly he must have laughed at her!
And she had never guessed it, never once had she had an inkling of the
truth.

"You have behaved disgracefully, cruelly," she said unsteadily.

"I don't think so," Chesney said coolly. "After all is said and done, we
were both posing, you know. You were playing 'Mrs. Kent' to my hero. It
seemed a pity to disturb so pleasant a pastoral. And no harm has been
done."

Ethel was not quite so sure of that. But then for the nonce she was
regarding the matter from a strictly personal point of view.

"I hardly think you were playing the game," she said.

"Why not? I come down here where nobody knows me. It is my whim to keep
quiet the fact that Goldney Park belongs to me. As to my dramatic
tastes, they don't concern anybody but myself. I take a cottage down
here until those tenants of mine are ready to go. They are such utter
bounders that I have no desire to disclose my identity to them. And so
it falls about that I meet you. Then I recollect all that my uncle has
said about you. I cultivate your acquaintance. It wasn't my fault that
you took me for a countryman with no idea beyond riding a horse and
shooting a pheasant. Your patronage was very pretty and pleasing, and I
am one of those men who always laugh or cry inside. It is perhaps a
misfortune that I can always joke with a grave face. But don't forget
that the man who laughs inside i