“We’ll talk of that later,” said Angela soothingly.  “Now I hope you’ll come to my rooms and rest, and tell me about yourself.  When we’re both washed and refreshed we’ll dine together in my sitting-room quietly.”

“But it isn’t about myself I want to talk,” protested the stranger.  “I must tell you my name, Mrs. May.  Of course, you’ve forgotten it.  It’s Miss Wilkins—­Sara Wilkins.”

She didn’t want to talk about herself!  That was puzzling and didn’t fit in with Angela’s deductions.  However, she made no comment, and talking of her day on Mount Tallac, escorted Miss Wilkins to a pretty sitting-room, which in her absence had been supplied with fresh flowers.

“Shall we talk first?” Angela asked.  “Or would you like to rest and bathe——­”

“If you’re not too tired yourself to listen to me, I’d rather talk now,” Sara answered with a kind of suppressed desperation.  “But you do look tired.  You’re thinner and paler than at Santa Barbara!  Yet I’ve been screwing my courage up to this for so long I can hardly bear to wait.”

“If I was tired I’ve forgotten it now,” said Angela.  “And I’m as eager to begin as you can be.  But you mustn’t feel that it needs courage to speak out, whatever you have to say.  And if there’s any way for me to make it easier for you, I should be so glad if you could give me just the slightest hint.  Shall we both sit down on this sofa together?”

“You sit there,” replied Sara.  “I don’t want to be comfortable.  I couldn’t lean back.  I’m all on edge.”

“Oh, but you mustn’t be ’on edge’!”

“I don’t tell you that to get sympathy, Mrs. May,” said the school-teacher, “but only because I’d like you to understand before I begin that I haven’t come just to be ‘cheeky’ and bold.  I came because I felt I must—­on somebody’s account, if not yours.  For myself, I didn’t want to force myself on you.  I didn’t want it one bit!  And now I’m here, if I could do what I feel most like doing, I’d run away as fast as ever I could go, without saying one more word.”

“You almost frighten me,” said Angela, her eyes dark and serious.  “Have I done something dreadful that—­that I ought to be warned not to do again, and you have come to tell me because you think I was once a little kind to you?  Not that I was really kind—­for it was nothing at all that I did.”

Miss Wilkins, sitting stiff and upright on the smallest, straightest, least luxurious chair in the pretty room, was silent for an instant, as if collecting all her forces.  “No,” she answered at last.  “It wouldn’t be fair to say exactly that.  And yet you have done something dreadful.  Oh, my goodness, this is even harder to get out than—­than I supposed it would be, for, of course, you’ll think it’s not my business anyhow.  And isn’t or wouldn’t be if—­if——­”

“If—­what?” Angela prompted her gently.