glared at Janet rather than his
convalescent as he spoke. "And ye're wrang in twanty. She _was_
tryin', and didn't know the way. She _was_ tryin', for she had his
watch and pocketbook. You're wrang if ye think she was ever there
before or after. The slut you saw cryin' at his back door was that
quean Elise, an' ye well know there was no love lost between them. Go
say yer prayers, man, for every wicked thought ye've had of him--or of
that poor child. Between them they saved your Angela!"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PARTING BY THE WATERS

"Some day I may tell Miss Angela--but never you," had Mr. Blakely
said, before setting forth on his perilous essay to find Angela's
father, and with native tenacity Miss Wren the elder had remembered
the words and nourished her wrath. It was strange, indeed, that Plume,
an officer and a gentleman, should have bethought him of the "austere
vestal" as a companion witness to Blakely's supposed iniquity; but,
between these two natures,--one strong, one weak,--there had sprung up
the strange sympathy that is born of a common, deep-rooted, yet
ill-defined antipathy--one for which neither she nor he could yet give
good reason, and of which each was secretly ashamed. Each, for reasons
of her or his own, cordially disliked the Bugologist, and each could
not but welcome evidence to warrant such dislike. It is human nature.
Janet Wren had strong convictions that the man was immoral, if for no
other reason than that he obviously sought Angela and as obviously
avoided her. Janet had believed him capable of carrying on a _liaison_
with the dame who had jilted him, and had had to see that theory
crushed. Then she would have it that, if not the mistress, he dallied
with the maid, and when it began to transpire that virulent hatred was
the only passion felt for him by that baffling and detestable
daughter of Belial, there came actual joy to the soul of the
Scotchwoman that, after all, her intuition had not been at fault. He
was immoral as she would have him, even more so, for he had taken base
advantage of the young and presumably innocent. She craved some proof,
and Plume knew it, and, seeing her there alone in her dejection, had
bidden her come and look--with the result described.

His own feeling toward Blakely is difficult to explain. Kind friends
had told him at St. Louis how inseparable had been Clarice and this
very superior young officer. She had admitted to him the "flirtation,"
but denied