“But that’s just what he is!” Clementina told how the Russian had lectured her, and wished her to go back to the country and work in the fields.

“Oh, if that’s all!” cried Miss Milray.  I was afraid it was another kind of earnestness:  the kind I shouldn’t like if I were you.”

“There’s no danger of that, I guess.”  Clementina laughed, and Miss Milray went on: 

“Another of your admirers was here; but he was not so inconsolable, or else be found consolation in staying on and talking about you, or joking.”

“Oh, yes; Mr. Hinkle,” cried Clementina with the smile that the thought of him always brought.  He’s lovely.”

“Lovely?  Well, I don’t know why it isn’t the word.  It suits him a great deal better than some insipid girls that people give it to.  Yes, I could really fall in love with Mr. Hinkle.  He’s the only man I ever saw who would know how to break the fall!”

It was lunch-time before their talk had begun to run low, and it swelled again over the meal.  Miss Milray returned to Mrs. Lander, and she made Clementina confess that she was a little trying sometimes.  But she insisted that she was always good, and in remorse she went away as soon as Miss Milray rose from table.

She found Mrs. Lander very much better, and willing to have had her stay the whole afternoon with Miss Milray.  “I don’t want she should have anything to say against me, to you, Clementina; she’d be glad enough to.  But I guess it’s just as well you’a back.  That scratched-out baron has been he’e twice, and he’s waitin’ for you in the pahla’, now.  I presume he’ll keep comin’ till you do see him.  I guess you betta have it ova; whatever it is.”

“I guess you’re right, Mrs. Lander.”

Clementina found the Russian walking up and down the room, and as soon as their greeting was over, he asked leave to continue his promenade, but he stopped abruptly before her when she had sunk upon a sofa.

“I have come to tell you a strange story,” he said.

“It is the story of that American friend of mine.  I tell it to you because I think you can understand, and will know what to advise, what to do.”

He turned upon his heel, and walked the length of the room and back before he spoke again.

“Since several years,” he said, growing a little less idiomatic in his English as his excitement mounted, “he met a young girl, a child, when he was still not a man’s full age.  It was in the country, in the mountains of America, and—­he loved her.  Both were very poor; he, a student, earning the means to complete his education in the university.  He had dedicated himself to his church, and with the temperament of the Puritans, he forbade himself all thoughts of love.  But he was of a passionate and impulsive nature, and in a moment of abandon he confessed his love.  The child was bewildered, frightened; she shrank from his avowal, and he, filled with remorse for his self-betrayal, bade her let it be as if it had not been; he bade her think of him no more.”