?"

"I suppose he thinks he ought not to leave Aunt Katrina--I mean for any
length of time."

"He comes for no length, long or short. Aunt Katrina? I thought you said
she'd got a lot of people?"

"Only Mrs. Carew."

"Mrs. Carew and five or six servants; that's enough in all conscience. I
shouldn't care in the least about Evert if it weren't for the evenings,
they're confoundedly long, you must admit that they are--for a person
who doesn't sew seams; if I had Ev here I could at least beat him at
checkers,--that would be something."

Checkers was the only game Lanse would play, he hated games generally.
His method of playing this one was hopelessly bad. That made no
difference in his being convinced that it was excellent. He blustered
over it always.

Margaret had not answered. After a while, still idly watching her hand
come and go, Lanse began to laugh. "No, I'll tell you what it really is,
Madge; I know it as well as if he had drawn up a formal indictment and
signed his name; he's all off with me on account of the way I've treated
you."

She started; but she kept on taking her stitches.

"Yes. What do you say to my having told him the whole story--just what
really happened, and without a shade of excusing myself in any way?
Don't you call that pretty good of me? But I found out, too, what I
didn't know before--that you yourself have never said a word all this
time either to him or to Aunt Katrina; that you have told nothing. I
call that pretty good of _you_; I dare say, in the mean while, Aunt
Katrina has led you a life!"

"I haven't minded that--she didn't know--"

"It was really very fine of you," said Lanse, appreciatively, after a
moment or two of silence, during which he had seemed to review her
course, and to sincerely admire it. "It would have been so easy to have
considered it your duty to tell, to have called the telling 'setting
yourself right;' everybody would have been on your side--would have
taken your part. But I can't say, after all, that I'm surprised," he
went on. "I have always had the most perfect confidence in you, Madge.
If I hadn't, I shouldn't have been so easy, of course, about going away;
but I knew I could leave you, I knew I could trust you; I knew you would
always be the perfect creature you have shown yourself to be."

"I'm not perfect at all," answered Margaret, throwing her work down
with a movement that was almost fierce. "Don't talk to me in that way."

"There! no need