With masculine obtuseness, Barth regarded it as a matter of pure chance that he found Nancy standing alone in the hall, that night. “Please go away and take M. St. Jacques with you,” she had begged Brock, as he had left the table. “I must have it out with him sometime, and I’d rather have it over.”
Brock looked at his watch.
“Will an hour be long enough?” he asked.
“I can’t tell. Please bid me good night now,” she urged him.
He smiled reassuringly down into her anxious eyes.
“Don’t take the situation too tragically, Miss Howard,” he said, with a brotherly kindness she was quick to feel as a relief to her strained nerves. “You weren’t to blame in the first place, and I can bear witness that you have been the most loyal friend he has had. If he is a bit unpleasant about it, send him to me, and I’ll knock him down.” He rose; but he lingered long enough to add, “I’ll look in on you, about nine o’clock, and see if I can help pick up the pieces.” And, with a nod of farewell, he was gone.
“Are you busy?” Barth asked, as he joined her, a little later.
“Am I ever busy in this indolent atmosphere?” she questioned in return, with a futile effort for her usual careless manner.
“Sometimes, as far as I am concerned. But what if we come into the drawing-room? It is quieter there.”
He spoke gently, yet withal there was something masterful in his manner, and Nancy felt that her hour was come. Nervously she tried to anticipate it.
“And you need a quiet place for the scene of the fray?” she asked flippantly.
“Fray?” His accent was interrogative.
“For the discussion, then.”
He was moving a chair forward. Then he looked up sharply, as he stood aside for her to take it.
“I can’t see that there is reason for any discussion, Miss Howard.”
“But you know you think I have been playing a double game with you,” Nancy broke out, in sudden irritation at his quiet.
His hands in his pockets, he walked across to the window and stood looking out. Then he turned to face Nancy.
“No. I am not sure that I do.”
“You feel that I ought to have told you before?”
“It would have been a little fairer to me,” he assented.
“I don’t see why,” she said defensively.
Barth raised his blue eyes to her face, and she repented her untruth.
“At least,” she amended; “I don’t see what difference it would have made.”
“Perhaps not. Still, it isn’t pleasant to be a stranger, and the one person outside a secret which concerns one’s self most of all.”
“No.”
“I wish you had told me,” he said thoughtfully. “It might have prevented some things that now I should like to forget.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, the way I have told you details with which you were already familiar.”
Nancy laughed nervously.
“And some with which I wasn’t familiar at all,” she added.
Barth’s color rose to the roots of his hair, and he bit his lip. Then he answered, with the same level accent,—
“Yes. But even you must admit that my error was unintentional.”
Nancy sat up straight in her deep chair.
“Even me!” she echoed stormily. “What do you mean, Mr. Barth?”
He met her angry eyes fearlessly, yet with perfect respect.
“Even you who were willing to take all the advantage of a complete stranger.”
“But I took no advantage,” she protested.
“No,” he admitted, after a pause. “Perhaps it was forced upon you. However, you accepted it. Miss Howard,” he paused again; “we Englishmen dislike to make ourselves needlessly ridiculous.”
She started to interrupt him; but he gave her no opportunity.
“I was ridiculous. I can fancy how funny it all must have seemed to you: my meeting you here without recognizing you, my telling you over all my regard for my former nurse. Of course, I must have seemed an ass to you, and to Mr. Brock and Mr. St. Jacques, too, after you had told them.”
This time, Nancy did interrupt him.
“Stop, Mr. Barth!” she said angrily. “Now you are the one who is unfair. I did tell Mr. Brock about our adventure at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré; but it was when I first met him, when I had no idea that either of us would ever see you again. I told the adventure; but I used no names. You had been in the house for several days before Mr. Brock found out that you were my former patient, and he found it out then from your own lips. When he told M. St. Jacques, or whether he told him at all, I am unable to say. I do know that M. St. Jacques knew it; but, upon my honor, I have told no one but the Lady and Mr. Reginald Brock.”
Bravely, angrily, she raised her eyes to his. Notwithstanding his former doubts, Barth believed her implicitly.
“Forgive my misunderstanding you, then,” he said simply. “But why couldn’t you have told me?”
“How could I?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I am sorry,” she said briefly. “It seemed to me out of the question.”
“Even when we were introduced?” he urged.
“It was before that that you had refused to recognize me.”
“When was that?”
“At the table, the first time you reappeared here,” she said vindictively. “I did my best to speak to you then; but you tried to give me the impression that you had never seen me before.”
Barth bowed in assent.
“I never had. You forget that my glasses were lost. You should be generous to a near-sighted man, Miss Howard, as you once were kind to a cripple. You might have given me another chance, when we were introduced.”
“There was nothing to show you cared for it,” Nancy returned curtly.
“And, even at Sainte Anne, you might have told me you were coming to Quebec,” he went on. “You knew I was coming here; you might have given me the opportunity to call and thank you.”
Impatiently Nancy clasped her hands and unclasped them.
“What is the use of arguing about it all?” she demanded restlessly. “You never could see the truth of it; no man could. I don’t want to beg off and make excuses. I have been in a false position from the start. I never made it, nor even sought it. It all came from chance. Still, it has been impossible for me to get myself out of it; but truly, Mr. Barth,” she looked up at him appealingly; “from the first hour I met you at Sainte Anne until to-day, I have never meant to be disloyal to you.”
“Then why couldn’t you have told me you had met me before?” he asked, returning to his first question with a curious persistency.
Nancy fenced with the question.
“But, strictly speaking, I had not met you.”
Barth’s eyes opened to their widest limit.
“O............