The old woman hesitated.

“No, she’s—­she’s in bed; but I’ll tell her what you said, though.  It will do her good.  I’m glad I came to see you.  I knew you loved her; you couldn’t help it.  She has been so good to you, and no woman ever loved a man more.  When you are married you will both be happy.  You’ll wonder then how you could be so silly.”

“I know I have been a fool.”  He took her hand and pressed it, almost affectionately.  “Take care of her, Mrs. Floyd; don’t let her be sick.”

She turned to leave him.  “She’ll be well in the morning, I hope; don’t worry.  She will get all right when she’s had a rest and a night’s sleep.  Now, let me walk on alone; the people talk so much in this place.”

He stopped behind a clump of sycamore bushes and watched her disappear in the gloom.  He saw her when she went through the light at the store, and again as she passed under the lamp at the hotel.  He followed slowly.  He passed the hotel and looked into the wide hall, but saw no one.

A lane led from the street to an open lot behind the hotel.  He remembered that Harriet’s room looked out that way, and, hardly knowing why he did so, he walked down the lane till he could see her window.  There was a light in the room.  For several minutes he stood gazing at the window, feeling his feet sink into the marshy soil.  He wondered how he could pass the long hours of the night without speaking to her.  He had just resolved that he would go to the hotel and implore Mrs. Floyd to let him see Harriet if only for a moment, when he noticed a shadow on the wall of the room.  It looked like some one sitting at a table.  He decided that it must be Mrs. Floyd watching by Harriet’s bed, and in imagination he saw the girl lying there white and unconscious.  Suddenly, however, the shadow disappeared.  The figure rose into the light and crossed the room.  It was Harriet.  She wore the same gown she had worn an hour before.  She stood for a moment in the light, as if placing something on the mantel-piece, and then resumed her seat at the table.  The shadow was on the wall again.  He looked at it steadily for twenty minutes.  His feet had sunk deeper into the loam and felt wet and cold.  Slowly he trudged back through the lane.  Mrs. Floyd had lied to him.  The girl was not ill.  At the street corner he stopped.  For an instant he was tempted to go to the hotel and ask Mrs. Floyd if he could see Harriet for a moment, that he might catch her in another lie, and then and there face her in it, but he felt too sick at heart.  Harriet had not swooned.  Mrs. Floyd had not undressed her and put her to bed.  She had made up the story to excite his sympathy and gain a point.  He groaned as he started on towards Bradley’s.  Mrs. Floyd had tried to get Bates to marry the girl, and now was attempting the same thing with him.  And why?