dinner, when people were all torpid with--"

She stopped breathlessly, with a break in her voice that sounded just
short of a sob.

"Well, I'm sufficiently ashamed of doing it, and not for the first time,"
he said, in sullen discontent with himself. "And I've been properly
punished. You can't think how sick it makes me to realize what a
detestable sensation I was seeking."

She did not heed what he was saying. "Was it that morning at St.
Johnswort when you got up so early, and went for a cup of coffee at the
inn?"

"Yes."

"I thought so! I could follow every instant of it; I could see just how
it was. If such a thing had happened to me, I would have died before I
spoke of it at such a time as this. Oh, _why_ do you suppose it happened
to you?" the girl grieved.

"Me, of all men?" said Hewson, with a self-contemptuous smile.

"I thought you were different," she said absently; then abruptly: "What
are you standing here talking to me so long for? You must go back! All
the men have gone back," and Hewson perceived that they had arrived in
the drawing-room, and were conspicuously parleying in the face of a dozen
interested women witnesses.

In the dining-room he took his way toward a vacant place at the table