“Hold on,” he burst out.  “Don’t talk to me that way to-night—­I can’t stand it.”

She glanced at him in surprise.  His face was pale and disordered; he was twisting his fingers as if he would break them.

“Your temper seems to be on the move, Mr. Sleeny.  We’d better go home,” she said quietly, drawing her shawl about her.

“Don’t go till I tell you something,” he stammered hastily.

“I have no curiosity to hear what you have to say,” she said, rising from her seat.

“It ain’t what you think—­it ain’t about me!”

Her curiosity awoke, and she sat down again.  Sleeny sat twisting his fingers, growing pale and red by turns.  At last, in a tremulous voice, he said: 

“I was there to-day.”

She stared at him an instant and said: 

“Where?”

“Oh, I was there, and I seen you.  I was at work at the end of the greenhouse there by the gate when you come out of the rose-house.  I was watchin’ for you.  I was on the lawn talkin’ with the gardener when you went in the house.  About an hour afterward I seen you comin’ down the garden with him to the rose-house.  If you had stayed there a minute more, I would ha’ went in there.  But out you come with your hands full o’ roses, and him and you come to the gate.  I stopped workin’ and kep’ still behind them pear trees, and I heard everything.”

He uttered each word slowly, like a judge delivering sentence.  His face had grown very red and hot, and as he finished his indictment he drew a yellow handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat from his forehead, his chin, and the back of his neck.

“Oh!” answered Maud, negligently, “you heard everything, did you?  Well, you didn’t hear much.”

“I tell you,” he continued, with a sullen rage, “I heard every word.  Do you hear me?  I heard every word.”

The savage roughness of his voice made her tremble, but her spirits rose to meet his anger, and she laughed as she replied: 

“Well, you heard ‘Thank you, sir,’ and ‘Good-morning.’  It wasn’t much, unless you took it as a lesson in manners, and goodness knows you need it.”

“Now, look’ye here.  It’s no use foolin’ with me.  You know what I heard.  If you don’t, I’ll tell you!”

“Very well, Mr. Paul Pry, what was it?” said the angry girl, who had quite forgotten that any words were spoken at the gate.

“I heard him tell you you could come in any time the back way,” Sam hoarsely whispered, watching her face with eyes of fire.  She turned crimson as the sunset she was gazing at, and she felt as if she could have torn her cheeks with her fingernails for blushing.  She was aware of having done nothing wrong, nothing to be ashamed of.  She had been all day cherishing the recollection of her visit to Farnham as something too pleasant and delicate to talk about.  No evil thought had mingled with it in her own mind.  She had hardly looked beyond