family news. And she said--she asked
me--but really I haven't the cheek to repeat her words--"

His cold face had become hot, and his manner agitated.

"Go on," said she, calming under the perception that the worst had come
utterly to the worst.

"Well, if you will forgive me--she asked me, in effect, when I was
coming to marry you, and why I had kept the engagement a secret so
long." He paused, one dark red blush, to note the effect of so brutal a
stroke.

She said, meeting his eyes for the first time:

"And you believed it at once--of ME?"

"No, Miss Pennycuick. I laughed. I said to myself: 'Here is another of
Miss Francie's mare's nests.' But when I read on--she told me so many
things--they were incredible, but still I felt I had to sift the
matter; and since I came up today, other people--I've been to Five
Creeks and had a talk with Jim Urquhart--now I don't know what to
think; at least, there is but one thing that I can think."

The chair she had taken had a high back, and against this she laid her
head, as if too weary to support it. Lack of sleep and appetite had
paled her florid colour to a sickly hue, and she looked wan and languid
as a dying woman. But still he did not pity her, as he must have done
had her face been half as beautiful as Deb's or Francie's.

"Miss Pennycuick," he continued, as she kept silence, "I want to get
the hang of this thing. Will you tell me straight--yes or no--have you
been giving it out that I left Redford two years ago engaged to you?"

Her first impulse was to cry out: "Oh, no, no! Not quite so bad as
that!" But on second thoughts she said:

"Yes--practically."

Sudden rage seemed to seize him. He sat up, he crossed his knees, he
uncrossed them, he twisted this way and that, he muttered "Good God!"
as if the pious ejaculation had referred to the Other Person, and his
stare at her was cruel.

"But--but--I have been racking my brains to remember anything--surely I
never gave you--I am perfectly convinced, I have the best reason for
being absolutely certain, that I could not have given you--"

"Never!" she broke in. "Of course not. It was all my own invention."

"You admit it? Thank you. You formally relieve me of the imputation I
have so long lain under without knowing it, of having run away from my
duty?"

She said lifelessly: "We thought you were dead."

"Hah! I see. You thought it didn't matter what you said of a dead man?
But dead men's characters should be a