upidity than
I can account for in _you_."

"Men are all stupid, of course," Winthrop answered.

"What makes all she has done for me the more remarkable," Garda went on,
not heeding his tone, "is the fact that she doesn't really like me, she
cannot, I am so different. Yet she goes on being good to me just the
same."

Winthrop made an impatient movement. "Suppose we don't talk any more
about Mrs. Harold," he said.

"I must talk about her, when I love her and trust her more than
anything."

"Don't trust her too much."

She drew her arm from his, indignantly. "One night she came way down the
live-oak avenue after me, with only slippers on her poor little feet, to
keep me from going out in the fog with Lucian--sailing, I mean. What do
you think of that?"

"I don't think anything."

"Yes, you do; your face shows that you do."

"My face shows, perhaps, what I think of the extraordinary duplicity of
women," said Winthrop.

"Duplicity? Do you call it duplicity for me to be telling you every
single thing I think and feel, as I have done to-day?"

"I was speaking of Mrs. Harold."

"Duplicity and Margaret!" exclaimed Garda.

They had reached the end of the orange aisle, and she no longer had his
arm. "I can't discuss her with you, Garda," he said. And he went out
into the sunshine beyond.

But Garda followed him. She came round, placed her hands on his
shoulders, and pushed him with soft violence back into the shade. "Why
do you speak so of her? you _shall_ tell me. Why shouldn't I trust her?
But I do and I will in spite of you!"

"Do you mean to marry that man, Garda?" asked Winthrop, at last, as she
stood there holding him, her eyes on his, thinking of her no longer as
the young girl of his fancy, but as the woman.

"I don't know," answered Garda, her tone altering; "perhaps he won't
care for me."

"But if he should care?"

"Oh!" murmured the girl, the most lovely, rapturous smile lighting up
her face.

Winthrop contemplated her for a moment. "Very well, then, I think I
ought to tell you: she cares for Lucian herself."

Garda's hands dropped. "It isn't possible that you believe that--that
you _have_ believed it! Margaret care for Lucian! She doesn't care a
straw for him, and since _I_ have begun to care for him again, I verily
believe that she has detested him; he knows it too. Margaret care for
him! What are you thinking of? _I_ care, not Margaret; I've done nothing
but try to be with him, and meet h