reathing a little hurriedly, feeling
rather as if she had been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands in his
pockets, looked not unlike the threatening image he had appeared in the
back of the goldsmith's shop.

"Of course, the fellow can talk," he admitted, "and he has a manner. But
Lord knows where he comes from or who he is. Why, even the Bullers don't
know."

Flora turned sharply on him. "Who told you that?"

"The judge. He picked him up at the club."

"Well," she kept it up, "some one had to introduce him there."

Harry smiled. "You wouldn't care to bow to some of those club members."

"Harry, do you know how you sound to me?" She was trembling at the
daring of what she was going to say. "You talk as if you knew something
against him."

Her statement seemed to bring him up short. "No, no, I don't," he said
hastily.

She made a little gesture of despair. How was she to count on Harry if
he was going to behave like this? How trust him when he was shuffling
so?

She made one more bold stroke to make him speak out.

"Harry, you _do_ know something about him! I know you have seen him
before."

"Why, yes, I've seen him before. But that's got nothing to do with it."

He looked surprised that she should seem to accuse him of it, and she
wondered if he could have forgotten how he had denied it before.

"And that isn't why you distrust him?"

The devil's tattoo that he beat on his hat stopped.

"I don't distrust him."

"Well, dislike him, then. When was it that you saw him before?"

"Isn't it enough for me to tell you that I don't want _you_ to see him?"

"Oh!" She turned away from him. Every nerve in her was in revolt. Then
he really wasn't going to tell her anything. He was keeping her out of
it as if she were a child. She had relied on him to return the ring. She
had counted upon his indifference and good nature. And he was neither
indifferent nor good-natured. All desire of even mentioning the ring to
him left her; and as to giving him her confidence--These hints that he
had thrown out about Kerr--they might be mere jealousy--but he might
have actual knowledge, knowledge that, with her own fitted to it, would
make for him a complete figure. She caught her breath at the thought of
how near she had come to actually betraying Kerr. Until that moment she
had not realized that through all her waverings her one fixed intention
had been not to betray him.

Harry had risen and was buttoning his overcoat.