Miss Forsyth leaned back and her eyes, half closed as they were, saw Weary away down by the door.  “No, I didn’t mean a dog.  I’m glad if he has gotten quite away from—­he’s such a dear fellow!  Even if he did—­but I never believed it, you know.  If only he had trusted me, and stayed to face—­ But he went without telling me goodbye, even, and we—­ But he was afraid, you see—­”

Miss Satterly also glanced across to where Weary stood gloomily alone, his hands thrust into his pockets.  “I really can’t imagine Mr. Davidson as being afraid,” she remarked defensively.

“Oh, but you don’t understand!  Will is physically brave—­and he was afraid I—­ but I believed in him, always—­even when—­” She broke off suddenly and became prettily diffident.  “I wonder why I am talking to you like this.  But there is something so sympathetic in your very atmosphere—­and seeing him so unexpectedly brought it all back—­and it seemed as if I must talk to someone, or I should shriek.” (Myrtle Forsyth was often just upon the point of “shrieking”) “And he was so glad to see me—­and when I told him I never believed a word—­ But you see, leaving the way he did—­”

“Well,” said Miss Satterly rather unsympathetically, “and how did he leave, then?”

Miss Forsyth twisted her watch chain and hesitated.  “I really ought not to say a word—­if you really don’t know—­what he did—­”

“If it’s to his discredit,” said the schoolma’am, looking straight at her, “I certainly don’t know.  It must have been something awful, judging from your tone.  Did he”—­she spoke solemnly—­“did he mur-rder ten people, old men and children, and throw their bodies into—­a well?”

It is saying much for Miss Forsyth that she did not look as disconcerted as she felt.  She did, however, show a rather catty look in her eyes, and her voice was tinged faintly with malice.  “There are other crimes—­beside—­murder,” she reminded.  “I won’t tell what it was—­but—­but Will found it necessary to leave in the night!  He did not even come to tell me goodbye, and I have—­but now we have met by chance, and I could explain—­and so,” she smiled tremulously at the schoolma’am, “I know you can understand—­and you will not mention to anyone what I have told you.  I’m too impulsive—­and I felt drawn to you, somehow.  I—­I would die if I thought any harm could come to Will because of my confiding in you.  A woman,” she added pensively, “has so much to bear—­and this has been very hard—­because it was not a thing I could talk over—­not even with my own mother!” Miss Forsyth had the knack of saying very little that was definite, and implying a great deal.  This method saved her the unpleasantness of retraction, and had quite as deep an effect is if she came out plainly.  She smiled confidingly down at the schoolma’am and went off to waltz with Bert Rogers, apparently quite satisfied with what she had accomplished.