her to eat, and to drink the hot tea, and she did feel the
better for it. Over her cup she lifted swimming eyes to his face,
whispering: "You are good to me!" And he remarked to himself that she
was not mad, as he had thought.

When the meal was disposed of, he felt that the time for explanations
and for considering how to deal with the extraordinary situation had
come.

"Now, my dear," he began, taking on something of the parson air at
last, "the first thing to be done is to inform your family of your
whereabouts. I must go and find up somebody to take a message to them,
to relieve their minds."

She roused from her semi-torpor to plead for a reprieve. Not yet--not
yet! Whatever she had to face, let her rest for a little first. They
had parted with her for the night; they would not go to her room, she
knew--outcast as she now was from the sympathy of them all; they would
not miss her before the morning. And, oh, she could not go home! She
had disgraced her family--her own father had wished her dead. She was a
wicked woman, not fit to live; but, if she must live, let it be
anywhere--anywhere--rather than at Redford now!

At this repetition of her strange charge against a doting father, and
the mention of disgrace, a distressing suspicion came into the parson's
mind. He calculated the length of time between Guthrie Carey's visits;
he looked at her searchingly. No, there was no evidence that she had
done the special wrong. But that there was wrong of some sort somewhere
was evident enough.

"I know your father's affection for you," he said seriously, "and I
cannot believe that he would express himself as you say he did."

"I deserved it," she said. "I don't blame him--nobody could."

"There must indeed have been some grave reason--"

"There was--there was!"

"What was it?"

"Oh, don't ask me!" she wailed, covering her face. But, crossing over
to her side, he took one of the shielding hands, and holding it
tenderly, assured her that she must tell him. He was her pastor--he was
her best friend; just now he was her champion, prepared to fight her
battle, whatever it was. And to do this successfully it was necessary
that he should know all. In the end she told him--not all, but the main
facts. He thought it the silliest case of making a mountain of a
molehill that he had ever heard of. He was convinced there was more in
the background, to account for the violent emotions aroused--to account
for a good girl leavin