would think you were going to write a rhetoric. What put Miss Thorn into
your head?"

"I have been coaching beside her this afternoon."

"Oh!" said Farrar.

"Do you remember the night she came," I asked, "and we sat with her on
the Florentine porch, and Charles Wrexell recognized her and came up?"

"Yes," he replied with awakened interest, "and I meant to ask you about
that."

"Miss Thorn had met him in the East. And I gathered from what she told
me that he has followed her out here."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Farrar. "Don't much blame him, do you? Is that
what troubles you?" he asked, in surprise.

"Not precisely," I answered vaguely; "but from what she has said then and
since, she made it pretty clear that she hadn't any use for him; saw
through him, you know."

"Pity her if she didn't. But what did she say?"

I repeated the conversations I had had with Miss Thorn, without revealing
Mr. Allen's identity with the celebrated author.

"That is rather severe," he assented.