e, this particular business has. Sit down."

She took the rocker. He sat at the other side of the table, waiting for
her to speak. It came to him, the thought that, the last time she had
visited that kitchen, she had left it vowing never to speak to him
again. Well, at least that was over; she no longer believed him a spy,
and all the rest of it. There was, or should be, some comfort for him in
knowing that.

Suddenly, just as she had done on the platform of the lawyer's office at
Orham, she put out her hand.

"Don't!" she pleaded.

He started, confusedly. "Don't?" he stammered. "What?"

"Don't think of--of what you were thinking. If you knew--oh, Cap'n
Kendrick, if you could only realize how wicked I feel. Even when I said
those dreadful things to you I didn't mean them. And now---- Oh,
_please_ forget them, if you can."

He drew a long breath. "I never saw any one like you," he declared. "How
did you know what I was thinkin'? ... Of course I wasn't thinkin' it,
but----"

She interrupted. "Of course you were, you mean," she said, with a faint
smile. "It isn't hard to know what you think. You don't hide your
thoughts very well, Cap'n Kendrick. They aren't the kind one needs to
hide."

He stared at her in guilty amazement. "Good land!" he ejaculated,
involuntarily. "Don't talk that way. What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that your thoughts are always straightforward and--well, honest,
like yourself.... But we mustn't waste time. I don't know when we shall
have another opportunity to be together like this, and there are some
things I must say to you. Cap'n Kendrick, you know--you have heard the
news?"

"News?... Oh, you mean about Elvira's inheritin' all that money?"

"That, of course. But that wasn't the news I meant. I mean about her
eloping with--with that man."

Troubled even as Sears was at the sight of her evident distress, he
could not but feel a thrill of satisfaction at the tone in which she
referred to "that man." He nodded.

"I've heard it," he said. "I guess likely I was about the first
Bayporter that did hear it. When did you hear?"

"A little while ago. He wrote--he wrote my mother a letter. It was at
the post office this morning."

"He did? He _didn't_! The low-lived scamp!"

"Hush! Don't talk about him. Yes, he wrote her. _Such_ a letter! She
showed it to me. So full of hypocrisy, and lies and--oh, can't you
imagine what it was?"

Kendrick's right fist tapped the table gently. "I gu