but the
fear that your conjectures and surmises might make trouble. I ask as a
right that you will say no more of the matter to any one."

"Would you mind telling me the lady's name?" she asked.

"Of course I shall do no such thing," I answered, rising from my seat,
with my face flushing with indignation.

"This is odd flirting, isn't it?" said she, still retaining her
seat,--"a quarrel at the very outset. I shall not be prevented from
informing you why you ought to tell me the name of the lady. You see
that if you don't give me her name my ungovernable curiosity will set me
to working the matter out for myself, and it is quite as likely as not
that I shall go to the House of Martha, and ask questions, and pry, and
watch, and make no end of trouble. If a blooming bride is to be picked
from that flock of ash-colored gruel-mixers, I want to know who it is to
be. I used to be acquainted with a good many of them, but I haven't
visited the House for some time."

I had never known any one assume toward me a position so unjustifiable
and so unseemly as that in which this lady had deliberately placed
herself. I could find no words to express my opinion of her conduct, and
was on the point of walking away, when she rose and quickly stepped to
my side.

"Don't go away angry," she said. "On this island we don't get angry; it
is too conventional. I am bound to find out all about this affair,
because it interests me. It is something quite out of the common; and
although you are in a measure right in saying that I have nothing to do
with your affairs, you must know you have in a measure mixed yourself up
with my affairs. I am one of the original subscribers to the House of
Martha, and used to take a good deal of interest in the establishment,
as was my right and privilege; but the sisters bored me after a time,
and as I have been traveling in Europe for more than a year I now know
very little of what has been going on there. But if there is a young
woman in that House who prefers marriage to hospital life and
tailor-made costumes to ash-bags, I say that she has mistaken her
vocation, and ought to be helped out of it; and although I know you to
be a pretty peppery gentleman, I am perfectly willing to help her in
your direction, if that is the way she wants to go. I offer myself to
you as an ally. Take me on your side, and tell me all about it. It would
be perfectly ridiculous to let me go down there imagining that this or
that u