d. He remembered my face dimly, more I guess because he couldn't
forget even the least thing associated with you than for any other reason.
Since then we've got to be friends."

Angela did not speak, even when Sara Wilkins made a slight hesitating
pause. Her heart was beating too fast and thickly for words to come, and,
besides, there seemed to be nothing to say yet, until she had heard more.

"Don't think," Sara went on, gathering courage, "that he confided in me in
any ordinary way. I just couldn't bear you should do him that injustice.
If you did I should have done harm instead of good by coming all this way
to see you. But the very first day I met him at Lucky Star I asked about
you, and I--_saw_; though he only said he believed you were in San
Francisco--that he was heart-broken about you. Even at Santa Barbara I
couldn't help making up a romance round you both--you so beautiful and
somehow like a great lady, though you didn't put on any airs at all; he so
handsome and splendid, like a hero in some book of the West. It was weeks
before we mentioned you again--he and I--though I saw a lot of him at
Lucky Star. He was kind, and it was holidays, so I hadn't much to do
except read books he lent me."

Still Angela said nothing, though it was evident that Miss Wilkins would
have been thankful at this stage for some leading question which might
help her over a difficult place. Angela could not now give the help she
had once offered. Rather was she in need of it herself. She sat waiting,
her eyes disconcertingly fixed upon the other woman's flushed face. But
that was because she could not bring herself to look away from it.

"Before we spoke of you again, what do you think he'd been doing?" the
school-teacher went on, almost fiercely.

"Oh, I can hardly tell you, it's so sad! If you're the sweet woman that in
spite of everything I think you _are_, you'll be sorry all the way through
to your heart. He--he hired a wretched humbug of a man who pretended to be
an English swell to teach him _manners_, so that he could be a little
worthier of you. He, _Nick Hilliard_, the noblest gentleman that ever drew
breath, to stoop to learning from a little thing who called itself Montagu
Jerrold. He did it because of what _you_ said to him."

"Oh!" cried Angela, her cheeks scarlet. "I said nothing--nothing which
could make him feel that I didn't think him a gentleman. I----"

"That's what I told him," Sara broke in. "I knew his reaso