r seeking, pitiful eyes were on him perpetually,
trying to make him out, to acquaint herself with this new personality,
which spoke in these harsh staccato phrases--to reconcile it with the
exciteable, sanguine, self-confident man whom she had deserted in his
youth.

'Well,' he resumed, 'and what was your farmer like?' Then,
suddenly--lifting his eyes--'Did he make love to you?'

She coloured hotly, and threw back her head.

'And if he did, it was no one's fault!--neither his nor mine. He
wasn't a bad fellow!--and he wanted some one to look after his
children.'

'Naturally. Quite content also to look after mine!' said Fenwick,
with a laugh which startled her--resuming his agitated walk, a curious
expression of satisfaction, triumph even, on his dark face. 'So _you_
found yourself in a false position?'

He stopped to look at her, and his smile hurt her sorely. But she had
made up her mind to a long patience, and she struggled on.

'It was partly that made me come home--that, and other things.'

'What other things?'

'Things--I saw--in some of the papers about you,' she said, with
difficulty.

'What--that I was a flat failure?--a quarrelsome ass, and that kind of
thing? You began to pity me?'

'Oh, John, don't talk to me like that?' She held out her hands to
him in appealing misery. 'I was _sorry_, I tell you!--I saw how I'd
behaved to you. I thought if you hadn't been getting on, perhaps it
was my fault. It upset me altogether!'

But he didn't relent. He stood still--fiercely interrogative--his
hands in his pockets, on the other side of the table.

'And what else was there?'

Phoebe choked back her tears.

'There was a woman--who came to live near us--who had been a maid--'
She hesitated.

'Please go on!'

'Maid to Madame de Pastourelles'--she said, hastily, stumbling over
the French name.

He exclaimed:

'In Ontario!'

'She married a man she had been engaged to for years; he'd been making
a home for her out there. I liked her directly I saw her; and she was
too delicate for the life; she came in the fall, and the winter
tried her dreadfully. I used to go in to nurse her--she was very much
alone--and she told me all about herself--and about--'

'Madame?'

Phoebe nodded, her eyes swimming again in tears.

'And you found out you'd been mistaken?'

She nodded again.

'You see--she talked about her to me a great deal. Of course I--I
never said anything. She'd been with her fifteen years--an