y people without noticing who wrote it; she
seemed to have thought it was Harding Davis or Henry James; she wasn't
clear which. But it was a good deal to have had her read it at all in
that house; I don't believe anybody else had, except Miss Shirley and
Miss Macroyd."

Mrs. Verrian deferred a matter that would ordinarily have interested
her supremely to an immediate curiosity. "And how came she to think you
would know so much about Miss Shirley?"

Verrian frowned. "I think from Miss Macroyd. Miss Macroyd seems to have
taken a grandmotherly concern in my affairs through the whole week.
Perhaps she resented having behaved so piggishly at the station the day
we came, and meant to take it out of Miss Shirley and myself. She had
seen us together in the woods, one day, and she must have told it about.
Mrs. Westangle wouldn't have spoken of us together, because she never
speaks of anything unless it is going to count; and there was no one
else who knew of our acquaintance."

"Why, my son, if you went walking in the woods with the girl, any one
might have seen you."

"I didn't. It was quite by accident that we met there. Miss Shirley was
anxious to keep her presence in the house a secret from everybody."

Mrs. Verrian would not take any but the open way, with this. She
would not deal indirectly, with it, or in any wise covertly or
surreptitiously. "It seems to me that Miss Shirley has rather a fondness
for secrecy," she said.

"I think she has," Verrian admitted. "Though, in this case, it was
essential to the success of her final scheme. But she is a curious
study. I suppose that timidity is at the bottom of all fondness for
secrecy, isn't it?"

"I don't know. She doesn't seem to be timid in everything."

"Say it out, mother!" Verrian challenged her with a smile. "You're not
timid, anyway!"

"She had the courage to join in that letter, but not the courage to own
her part in it. She was brave enough to confess that she had been sick
of a nervous fever from the answer you wrote to the Brown girl, but she
wouldn't have been brave enough to confess anything at all if she had
believed she would be physically or morally strong enough to keep it."

"Perhaps nobody--nobody but you, mother--is brave in the right time and
place."

She knew that this was not meant in irony. "I am glad you say that,
Philip."

"It's only your due. But aren't you a little too hard upon cowards, at
times? For the sort of person she is, if you