,--if he took so much trouble for her, that he
did, after all, care more perhaps than she had sometimes thought? But
what an extraordinary meeting it had been! He had at once launched
forth on this extreme discourse. She sat back, and let her eyes rest
on him with amused tolerance, her smile attentively adjusted to suit
his mood; for her moment's anxiety vanished at further sight of his
strong, broad shoulders and the handsome appearance he made in her
favorite high-back chair, his firm hands grasping the arms of it.

"You've stayed away from America too long," she said carelessly; "Paris
is bad for you."

He leaned forward, his delicately modeled cheekbones emphasized by the
firelight, his hair becomingly awry.

"I _knew_ it would all be as it was," he went inspiredly on. "There was
a thick clump of hedge, cold and dreary in the mist, that awoke pictures
of a prison I used to dread the sight of when I was--I don't know how
old. Once I partly thought I must be dreaming; so I put out my hand and
touched the wet, sodden picket of an old fence. I looked suspiciously
behind me. But there was only an old man behind, fully two hundred yards
away. Then the idea came to me that it would be a relief to talk to
somebody; I hadn't interchanged a word with any one since I got off the
ship. All kinds of impressions, you see, had been accumulating, and they
thronged like phantoms about me.

"I wanted to hear myself speak--to see if I could. So I turned, and
waited for him to come. The rain was dripping all around; there wasn't
another sound anywhere. Now, this is the queerest thing of all: what do
you think I said to him?" Jack leaned forward, his eyes darting
intensely over her face. "I said: 'Can you tell me the way to Mr.
Eberdeen's house?'"

"Mr.--_Eberdeen's_ house!" She stood abruptly up. "Who--who told you,"
she gasped, "that this was Mr. Eberdeen's house?"

He stood up, too, stepping back from her. "You must have told me," he
said, aware of his quivering lips, "in one of your letters. The name
came to me--"

"I never told you," she stated emphatically, "I never told any
one--for--for--why did you ask such a question of that old man?"

His gaze wandered.

"My throat felt parched from disuse. It took a distinct effort to make
the words sound articulate.

"'Sure, now,' answered the old man, while I was still puzzling to
explain to myself the question I had asked him, 'but never have I
heard it called _that_--not sin