I ever been anything else with you?"

"No. You've been straight as a die. I'll say that for you. You've been a
good pal--a devilish good pal! But over here--in America--everything
seems to go by enigmas--and puzzles--and surprises--"

"I'll explain what I can to you," she said, with a heightened color,
"but it won't be so very easy. There are lots of people who, feeling as
I do--toward Olivia--and--and toward you--would want to beat about the
bush. But when all these things began to happen--and you were already on
the way--I turned everything over in my mind and decided to speak
exactly as I think."

"Good!"

"But it isn't so very easy," she repeated, pretending to rearrange the
dahlia in her laces, so as to find a pretext for not looking him in the
eyes. "It isn't so very easy; and if--later on--in after years
perhaps--when everything is long over--it ever strikes you that I didn't
play fair--it'll be because I played _so_ fair that I laid myself open
to that imputation. One can, you know. I only ask you to remember it.
That's all."

Ashley was bewildered. He could follow little more than half of what she
said. "More mysteries," he was sighing to himself as she spoke. "And
such a color! That's her strong point. Pity it only comes by fits and
flashes. But, good Lord, what a country! Always something queer and
new."

"Good-by," she said, offering her hand before he had time to emerge from
his meditations. "We shall see you to-morrow evening. And, by the way,
we dine at half-past seven. We're country people here, and primitive.
No; don't come to the gate. Olivia must be wondering where you are."

He looked after her as she tripped over the lawn toward the roadway,
still holding her long-handled, beribboned, eighteenth-century sunshade
with the daintiness of a Watteau shepherdess holding a crook.

"She's a good 'un," he said to himself. "Straight as a die, she is--and
true as steel."

None the less he was glad when she left him.

XVI

Ashley wanted to be alone. He needed solitude in order to face the
stupendous bit of information Mrs. Fane had given him. Everything else
he had heard during the past twenty-four hours he had felt himself more
or less competent to meet. True, his meeting it would be at a sacrifice
and the probable loss of some of the best things he had hoped and worked
for; but he should have the satisfaction that comes to every man of
honor when he has done a brave thing well. There wou