“Oh, yes; some one has.  I think I have a right to demand who it is.  Is it that man Keith?”

“No.”  She glanced at him with a swift flash in her eye.  “Mr. Keith has not mentioned your name to me since I came home.”

Her tone fired him with jealousy.

“Well, who was it, then?  He is not above it.  He hates me enough to say anything.  He has never got over our buying his old place, and has never lost an opportunity to malign me since.”

She looked him in the face, for the first time, quite steadily.

“Let me tell you, Mr. Keith has never said a word against you to me—­and that is much more than I can say for you; so you need not be maligning him now.”

A faint flush stole into Wickersham’s face.

“You appear to be championing his cause very warmly.”

“Because he is a friend of mine and an honorable gentleman.”

He gave a hard, bitter laugh.

“Women are innocent!”

“It is more than men are” she said, fired, as women always are, by a fleer at the sex.

“Who has been slandering me?” he demanded, angered suddenly by her retort.  “I have stood in a relation to you which gives me a right to demand the name.”

“What relation to me?—­Where is your wife?”

His face whitened, and he drew in his breath as if struck a blow,—­a long breath,—­but in a second he had recovered himself, and he burst into a laugh.

“So you have heard that old story—­and believe it?” he said, with his eyes looking straight into hers.  As she made no answer, he went on.  “Now, as you have heard it, I will explain the whole thing to you.  I have always wanted to do it; but—­but—­I hardly knew whether it were better to do it or leave it alone.  I thought if you had heard it you would mention it to me—­”

“I have done so now,” she said coldly.

“I thought our relation—­or, as you object to that word, our friendship—­entitled me to that much from you.”

“I never heard it till—­till just now,” she defended, rather shaken by his tone and air of candor.

“When?

“Oh—­very recently.”

“Won’t you tell me who told you?”

“No—­o.  Go on.”

“Well, that woman—­that poor girl—­her name was—­her name is—­Phrony
Tripper—­or Trimmer.  I think that was her name—­she called herself
Euphronia Tripper.”  He was trying with puckered brow to recall exactly. 
“I suppose that is the woman you are referring to?” he said suddenly.

“It is.  You have not had more than one, have you?”

He laughed, pleased to give the subject a lighter tone.

“Well, this poor creature I used to know in the South when I was a boy—­when I first went down there, you know?  She was the daughter of an old farmer at whose house we stayed.  I used to talk to her.  You know how a boy talks to a pretty girl whom he is thrown with in a lonesome old country place, far from any amusement.”  Her eyes showed that she knew, and he was satisfied and proceeded.