Like many another crafty person, Betsey Malcolm had fairly overshot the
mark. In seeking to separate Humphreys from Julia, she had given him the
clue he desired, and he was not slow to use it, for he was almost the
only person that Mrs. Anderson trusted alone with Julia.

In the dusk of the evening of the very day of his talk with Betsey, he
sat on the long front-porch with Julia. Julia liked him better, or
rather did not dislike him so much in the dark as she did in the light.
For when it was light she could see him smile, and though she had not
learned to connect a cold-blooded face with a villainous character, she
had that childish instinct which made her shrink from Humphreys's square
smile. It always seemed to her that the real Humphreys gazed at her out
of the cold, glittering eyes, and that the smile was something with
which he had nothing to do.

Sitting thus in the dusk of the evening, and looking out over the green
pasture to where the nigher hills ceased and the distant seemed to come
immediately after, their distance only indicated by color, though the
whole Ohio "bottom" was between, she forgot the Mephistopheles who sat
not far away, and dreamed of August, the "grand," as she fancifully
called him. And he let her sit and dream undisturbed for a long time,
until the darkness settled down upon the hills. Then he spoke.

"I--I thought," began Humphreys, with well-feigned hesitancy, "I
thought, I should venture to offer you my assistance as a true and
gallant man, in a matter--a matter of supreme delicacy--a matter that I
have no right to meddle with. I think I have heard that your mother is
not friendly to the suit of a young man who--who--well, let us say who
is not wholly disagreeable to you. I beg your pardon, don't tell me