soon to give to her maid. "Mr. Riatt is the most wonderful
provider--expert as a cook as well as a furnace-man."

"It mayn't have been terrible for you," put in Ussher, who had a habit of
conversational reversion, "but I bet it was no joke in the tool-house!
How an intelligent woman like you, Christine, could dream of making a man
spend the night in that hole, just for the sake of--"

"But I thought it was Mr. Riatt's own choice," said Nancy gently.

"You wouldn't think so if you could have felt the place," Ussher
continued. "And what difference did it make? Who was there to talk? Every
one knows that their being there was just an unavoidable accident--"

"Oh, if it had been an accident!" said Nancy, and it was as if a little
venomous snake had suddenly wriggled itself into the conversation. Every
one turned toward her, and her brother asked sternly:

"_If_, it had been an accident, Nancy? What the deuce do you mean by
_if_?"

Nancy shook her small head. "I express myself badly," she said. "English
rhetoric was left out of my education."

"You manage to convey your ideas, dear," said Laura.

"I was trying to say that if poor, dear Christine had not been so
unfortunately the one to hit the horse in the head, and start him off--"

Wickham pricked up his ears. "Oh, I say, Miss Fenimer," he exclaimed,