't care much. Iona Allen can look for
some one nearer home to support her.

"Well, to go back. When Charlie Hunt had called me Mrs. Barton for the
third time I realized from his way of doing it that it wasn't a slip of
the tongue, and I stopped him short and said:

"'What makes you call me Mrs. Barton all of a sudden?'"

"'It's your name, isn't it?' he said, with a queer look.

"'No,' I came right out strong and bold. And I wasn't lying either. It
isn't my name. I don't really know what my name is. It's Hawthorne as
much as it's anything. Jim changed his name half a dozen times, and the
name he married me under I found out wasn't his real name.

"Charlie Hunt stood there a moment as if thinking it over, looking at me
with the meanest grin; then he said with that hateful, sarcastic look of
a person who thinks he's being smart in getting back at you:

"'Is that as true,' he said, 'as that you never indulged in carnival
humor masked as a crow?' Then I knew he'd somehow got on to the truth
about that night at the _veglione_. But I wasn't going to give it
away.

"'You know what you're driving at better than I do,' I said. And then I
said: 'What's it all about? What's your game?' And he said, as if I'd
been a common swindler that he'd found out:

"'What's yours?'

"Then I felt myself get mad.

"'You're a mean little pest,' I said, but between my teeth, and not so
that any one but he could hear me. And 'You're an evil-minded little
scalawag,' I said. 'You certainly don't know me if you think I've done
anything in this world to be ashamed of. Go ahead,' I said; 'do what you
please. Don't for one single instant think that I'm afraid of you or
that you can do me any harm.' And I left him standing there, with his
grin, and flounced out. But what do you think of it, Gerald? Why should
Charlie Hunt behave like that to me?"

"I could judge better if I knew what you said to him at the
_veglione_."

"It wasn't very bad. It might provoke him for a minute to know that it
was I who said it, but it oughtn't to make him mad enough to bite. I
went up to him, and I said close to his ear, in my good English:

"'You amusing little match-maker,' I said, 'what do you hope to get from
your dusky friend marrying that _absard_ American? How much do you
know about her?' I said. 'Are you even sure she's as rich as she seems?'
Then he said, polite but stiff:

"'You have the advantage of me, madam, in knowing what you're talking
about.