times, myself."

"But that doesn't excuse me. You knew the kind of people to tell it to,
and I didn't."

"Oh, I am afraid I was willing to tell it to all kinds of people--to any
kind that would listen."

"You are trying to evade me, Mr. Hewson," she said, with a severity he
found charming. "I didn't expect that of you."

The appeal was not lost upon Hewson. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want you," said Miss Hernshaw, with an effect of giving him another
trial, "to say--to acknowledge that you were terribly annoyed by that
interview."

"If you will excuse me from attaching the slightest blame to you for it,
I will acknowledge that I was annoyed."

Miss Hernshaw drew a deep breath as of relief. "I will arrange about
the blame," she said loftily. "And now I wish to tell you how I
never supposed that girl was an interviewer. We were all together
at an artist's house in Rome, and after dinner, we got to telling
ghost-stories, the way people do, around the fire, and I told mine--yours
I mean. And before we broke up, this girl came to me--it was while we
were putting on our wraps--and introduced herself, and said how much she
had been impressed by my story--of course, I mean your story--and she
said she supposed it was made up. I said I should not dream of making up
a thing of that kind, and that it was every word true, and I had heard