“You’re generous!” he remarked, with one of his quick smiles.

“It’s a book,” I snapped, and fell to stirring again.  But he was moping once more, with his feet out and his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

“I say, Minnie—­”

“Yes?”

“Miss—­Miss Jennings and the von Inwald were here just now, weren’t they?  I passed them on the bridge.”

“Yes.”

“What—­how do you like him?”

“Better than I expected and not so well as I might,” I said.  “If you are going to the house soon you might take Miss Patty her handkerchief.  It’s there under that table.”

I took my mixture into the pantry and left it to cool.  But as I started back I stopped.  He had got the handkerchief and was standing in front of the fire, holding it in the palm of his hand and looking at it.  And all in a minute he crushed it to his face with both hands and against the firelight I could see him quivering.

I stepped back into the pantry and came out again noisily.  He was standing very calm and quiet where he had been before, and no handkerchief in sight.

“Well,” I said, “did you get it?”

“Get what?”

“Miss Patty’s handkerchief?”

“Oh—­that!  Yes.  Here it is.”  He pulled it out of his pocket and held it up by the corner.

“Ridiculous size, isn’t it, and—­” he held it up to his nose—­“I dare say one could almost tell it was hers by the scent.  It’s—­it’s like her.”

“Humph!” I said, suddenly suspicious, and looked at it.  “Well,” I said, “it may remind you of Miss Patty, and the scent may be like Miss Patty, but she doesn’t use perfume on her handkerchief.  This has an E. C. on it, which means Eliza Cobb.”

He left soon after, rather crestfallen, but to save my life I couldn’t forget what I’d seen—­him with that scrap of linen that he thought was hers crushed to his face, and his shoulders heaving.  I had an idea that he hadn’t cared much for women before, and that, this being a first attack, he hadn’t established what the old doctor used to call an immunity.

CHAPTER XIV

PIERCE DISAPPROVES

Mrs. Hutchins came out to the spring-house the next morning.  She was dressed in a black silk with real lace collar and cuffs, and she was so puffed up with pride that she forgot to be nasty to me.

“I thought I’d better come to you, Minnie,” she said.  “There seems to be nobody in authority here any more.  Mr. Carter has put the—­has put Mr. von Inwald in the north wing.  I can not imagine why he should have given him the coldest and most disagreeable part of the house.”

I said I’d speak to Mr. Carter and try to have him moved, and she rustled over to where I was brushing the hearth and stooped down.

“Mr. von Inwald is incognito, of course,” she said, “but he belongs to a very old family in his own country—­a noble family.  He ought to have the best there is in the house.”