hat you've got against him."

And Ranny replied in a voice devoid of rancor: "He's a low swine. If we
took him in I should have to build a pigsty at the bottom of the garden
for him, and I can't afford it. Granville isn't big enough for him and
me. And it wouldn't be big enough for him and you, neither. You'd be the
first to come and ask me to chuck him out." He spoke low, for he heard
the neighbors talking in the next garden.

"Fat lot you think of _me_!" she cried.

"It's you I _am_ thinking of."

She rose from the table, dragging the cloth askew in her trailing,
hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back
against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there,
leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her
mouth till the storm of her sobbing burst through.

The people in the next garden stopped talking.

"For God's sake," said Ranny, "shut that window."

He got up and shut it himself, moving her inert bulk aside gently for
the purpose. And she stood against the wall and laid her face on it and
cried.

And Ranny called upon the Lord in his helplessness.

He went and put his arm round her, and she thrust him from her, and then
whimpered weakly:

"Wh--wh--wh--why are you so unkind to me?"

"Unkind! Oh, my Aunt Eliza!"

"You don't care. You don't care," she moaned. "You don't care what
happens to me. I might die to-morrow, and you wouldn't care."

"Oh, come--" he ventured.

But Violet wouldn't come. She was off, borne from him on the rising tide
of hysteria.

"It's true! It's true!" she cried. "Else you wouldn't use me like you
do."

"But look here. Whatter you goin' on about? Just because I don't want
you to have anything to do with Mercier."

She raised her flaming face at that.

"It's a lie! It's a beastly lie! I never had anything to do with
Mercier."

"Who said you'd had anything to do with him?"

"You did. And I hardly know him. I've hardly seen him. I've hardly
spoken to him be--be--before."

"I never said you had."

"You thought it."

"You know I didn't. How _could_ I think it?"

"You _did_. That's why you wouldn't let him come. You won't trust me
with him."

"Trust you with him? I should think I _would_ trust you. Him! The flabby
swine!"

Violet's sobs sank lower. They shook her inwardly, which was terrible to
see.

And as he looked at her he remembered yet again how in the beginning he
had wronged her. _That_ w