she said quietly, drawing her shawl about her.

"Don't go till I tell you something," he stammered hastily.

"I have no curiosity to hear what you have to say," she said, rising
from her seat.

"It ain't what you think--it ain't about me!"

Her curiosity awoke, and she sat down again. Sleeny sat twisting his
fingers, growing pale and red by turns. At last, in a tremulous voice,
he said:

"_I_ was there to-day."

She stared at him an instant and said:

"Where?"

"Oh, I was there, and I seen you. I was at work at the end of the
greenhouse there by the gate when you come out of the rose-house. I was
watchin' for you. I was on the lawn talkin' with the gardener when you
went in the house. About an hour afterward I seen you comin' down the
garden with him to the rose-house. If you had stayed there a minute
more, I would ha' went in there. But out you come with your hands full
o' roses, and him and you come to the gate. I stopped workin' and kep'
still behind them pear trees, and I heard everything."

He uttered each word slowly, like a judge delivering sentence. His face
had grown very red and hot, and as he finished his indictment he drew a