nothing about me."

"Have you forgotten that you know nothing of me?"

"Oh, I do know something about you," she said shyly. "Remember that I have
dined with your friends. I could not help seeing that they were good
people, especially that delightful old man, the Judge. He looked
startlingly like my dear father. I saw how they all honored and loved you.
And then what you have done for me, and the way that you treated an
utterly defenceless stranger, were equal to years of mere acquaintance. I
feel that I know a great deal about you."

He smiled. "Thank you," he said, "but I have not forgotten that something
more is due you than that slight knowledge of me, and before I came out
here I went to the pastor of the church of which my mother is a member,
and which I have always attended and asked him to write me a letter. He is
so widely known that I felt it would be an introduction for me."

He laid an open letter in her lap, and, glancing down, she saw that it was
signed by the name of one of the best known pulpit orators in the land,
and that it spoke in highest terms of the young man whom it named as "my
well-loved friend."

"It is also your right to know that I have always tried to live a pure and
honorable life. I have never told any woman but you that I loved
her--except an elderly cousin with whom I thought I was in love when I was
nineteen. She cured me of it by laughing at me, and I have been
heart-whole ever since."

She raised her eyes from reading the letter.