of rattling about the Smiths," interposed a voice here.

It was Will Wentworth's voice; he had come out on the piazza just as the
girls were passing the hall door.

Agnes started back nervously at the sight of him. "I think you are very
rude to listen and spring at anybody like this," she said.

Will looked at her in astonishment. "I haven't been listening, and I
didn't spring at you," he responded indignantly. "I simply met you as I
came out, and heard you say something about the Smiths."

"What did you hear?" asked Agnes, quickly.

"I heard you say to Tilly, 'Stand up for your Smiths if you like;' and I
knew by that you'd been going for Miss Peggy, and Tilly had been
defending her." Will's bright eyes, as he said this, suddenly observed
that there was something unusually serious in the girl's face. "What's
the matter?" he inquired; "what's up now?"

Agnes put her hand into her pocket, and Tilly drew in her breath with a
little gasp, and braced herself to come to the defence again when Agnes
should answer this question, as she fully expected her to do, by
producing the cutting from the newspaper and repeating her accusations.
But when Agnes drew her hand forth, there was no slip of paper in it,
and all the answer that she made to Will's question was to say in a
mocking tone,--

"Ask Tilly; she knows all the delightful facts now about Miss Peggy and
her highly respectable family."

The decisive tone in which this was said, the significant expression of
the speaker's face as she glanced at Tilly, and Tilly's own silence at
the moment impressed Will very strongly, as Agnes fully intended; and
when a minute later she slipped her hand over Dora's arm, and went off
with her toward the tennis ground, and Tilly refused to tell him what
this something that was "up" was, honest Will felt convinced that the
"something" must be very queer indeed.

Poor Tilly saw and understood at once the nature of the impression that
Will had received; but what could she do? It was certainly better to
keep silence than to speak and tell that dreadful, dreadful story of
"Smithson, alias Smith." Even, yes, even if it was true,--for Tilly,
spite of her vehement defence, her stout declaration of disbelief at the
first, had a shuddering fear at her heart as she thought of that last
paragraph about the girl of fourteen or fifteen, and of that letter to
South America,--a shuddering fear that the story might be true; but even
then she would not