“I’m getting to know him, however,” said the master.  “And, before I’m done, I hope to know him very well indeed.”

“Well, he has a persuasive tongue.”

“I think I noticed that for myself.”

“And, when he told me how poor Bill Gregg had come clear across the continent—­”

“No wonder you were touched, my dear.  New Yorkers won’t travel so far, will they?  Not for a girl, I mean.”

“Hardly!  But Ronicky Doone made it such a sad affair that I promised I’d go across and see Bill Gregg.”

“Not in his room?”

“I knew you wouldn’t let him come to see me here.”

“Never presuppose what I’ll do.  But go on—­I’m interested—­very.  Just as much as if Ronicky Doone himself were telling me.”

She eyed him shrewdly, but, if there were any deception in him, he hid it well.  She could not find the double meaning that must have been behind his words.  “I went there, however,” she said, “because I was sorry for him, John.  If you had seen you’d have been sorry, too, or else you would have laughed; I could hardly keep from it at first.”

“I suppose he took you in his arms at once?”

“I think he wanted to.  Then, of course, I told him at once why I had come.”

“Which was?”

“Simply that it was absurd for him to stay about and persecute me; that the letters I wrote him were simply written for fun, when I was doing some of my cousin’s work at the correspondence schools; that the best thing he could do would be to take my regrets and go back to the West.”

“Did you tell him all that?” asked John Mark in a rather changed voice.

“Yes; but not quite so bluntly.”

“Naturally not; you’re a gentle girl, Caroline.  I suppose he took it very hard.”

“Very, but in a silly way.  He’s full of pride, you see.  He drew himself up and gave me a lecture about deceiving men.”

“Well, since you have lost interest in him, it makes no difference.”

“But in a way,” she said faintly, rising slowly from her chair, “I can’t help feeling some interest.”

“Naturally not.  But, you see, I was worried so much about you and this foolish fellow that I gave orders for him to be put out of the way, as soon as you left him.”

Caroline Smith stood for a moment stunned and then ran to him.

“No, no!” she declared.  “In the name of the dear mercy of Heaven, John, you haven’t done that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Then call him back—­the one you sent.  Call him back, John, and I’ll serve you the rest of my life without question.  I’ll never fail you, John, but for your own sake and mine, for the sake of everything fair in the world, call him back!”

He pushed away her hands, but without violence.  “I thought it would be this way,” he said coldly.  “You told a very good lie, Caroline.  I suppose clever Ronicky Doone rehearsed you in it, but it needed only the oldest trick in the world to expose you.”