s to calm her. "Your story _is_
real and I will prove it so. Meanwhile trust your reason. It will not
fail you."

He had observed the corners of the landlord's hitherto restrained lips
settle into a slightly sarcastic curl as the door of this room closed
for the second time.

II

"The girl's beauty has imposed on you."

"I don't think so. I should be sorry to think myself so weak. I simply
credit her story more than I do that of Quimby."

"But his is supported by several witnesses. Hers has no support at all."

"That is what strikes me as so significant. This man Quimby understands
himself. Who are his witnesses? His wife and his head man. There is
nobody else. In the half-hour which has just passed I have searched
diligently for some disinterested testimony supporting his assertion,
but I have found none. No one knows anything. Of the three persons
occupying rooms in the extension last night, two were asleep and the
third overcome with drink. The maids won't talk. They seem uneasy, and I
detected a sly look pass from the one to the other at some question I
asked, but they won't talk. There's a conspiracy somewhere. I'm as sure
of it as that I am standing here."

"Nonsense! What should there be a conspiracy about? You would make this
old woman an important character. Now we know that she wasn't. Look at
the matter as it presents itself to an unprejudiced mind. A young and
susceptible girl falls in love with a man, who is at once a gentleman
and a scamp. She may have tried to resist her feelings, and she may not
have. Your judgment and mine would probably differ on this point. What
she does _not_ do is to let her mother into her confidence. She sees the
man--runs upon him, if you will, in places or under circumstances she
cannot avoid--till her judgment leaves her and the point of catastrophe
is reached. Then, possibly, she awakens, or what is more probable, seeks
to protect herself from the penetration and opposition of his friends
by meetings less open than those in which they had lately indulged. She
says that she left the house to escape seeing him again last night. But
this is not true. On the contrary, she must have given him to understand
where she was going, for she had an interview with him in the woods
before she came upon her mother. He acknowledges to the interview. I
have just had a talk with him over the telephone."

"Then you know his name?"

"Yes, of course, she had to tell me. It's young Max