she would, she could not shake it off. It caught her back in the middle
of her talk, made her answer at random, and held her with a terrible
power. She considered that there were a thousand other things she might
have said or done, a hundred ways by which she might have appealed to
Hartley, and yet her common sense told her that the less she said on the
subject the better it would be, if, in the end, the Rev. Francis Heath
was led into the awful pitfalls of cross-examination. Anyone may forget
and recall facts later, but to state facts that may be used as evidence
is to stand handcuffed before inexorable justice, and Mrs. Wilder had
left her hands free.

"Is anything the matter?" Draycott jerked out the question as he got up
to leave the room. "You seem rather silent."

Clarice laughed, and her laugh was slightly forced.

"I went for a ride this morning, and met Mr. Hartley. He is the most
exhausting man I ever met."

"I hope you told him so," said Wilder shortly. "He's about here
frequently enough, even though he _does_ bore you."

Something in his voice made her eyes focus him very clearly and
distinctly.

"I have a very good mind to tell him," she said easily, "but he is
blessed with a skin that would turn the edge of any ordinary hatchet; he
would think I was merely being 'funny.'"

"It's an odd fact," said Draycott with a sneer in his eyes, "that