Either the suddenness of the question, or the intentness of his scrutiny, or the painful consciousness of the true cause of her failure to accept the invitation, brought back the blood which surprise had driven from her cheeks.

“I preferred remaining at home.”

“Home! home!” he repeated, and continued vehemently:  “Do you really expect me to believe that a girl of your age, with the choice of a dinner-party among the elite, with lace, silk, and feathers, champagne, bon-mot, and scandal, flattering speeches and soft looks from young gentlemen, biting words and hard looks from old ladies, or the alternative of a dull, lonely evening in this cold, dreary den of mine, shut up with mummies, MSS., and musty books, could deliberately decline the former and voluntarily select the latter?  Such an anomaly in sociology, such a lusus naturae, might occur in Bacon’s ‘Bensalem,’ or in some undiscovered and unimagined realm, where the men are all brave, honest, and true, and the women conscientious and constant!  But here! and now?  Ah! pardon me!  Impossible!”

Edna felt as if Momus’ suggestion to Vulcan, of a window in the human heart, whereby one’s thoughts might be rendered visible, had been adopted; for, under the empaling eye bent upon her, the secret motives of her conduct seemed spread out as on a scroll, which he read as well.

“I was invited to Mrs. Inge’s, yet you find me here, because I preferred a quiet evening at home to a noisy one elsewhere.  How do you explain the contradiction if you disbelieve my words?”

“I am not so inexperienced as to tax my ingenuity with any such burden.  With the Penelope web of female motives may fates and furies forbid rash meddling.  Unless human nature here in America has undergone a radical change, nay, a most complete transmogrification, since I abjured it some years ago; unless this year is to be chronicled as an Avatar of truth and unselfishness, I will stake all my possessions on the assertion that some very peculiar and cogent reason, something beyond the desire to prosecute archaeological researches, has driven you to decline the invitation.”

She made no reply, but opened the book-case and replaced the volume which she had been reading; and he saw that she glanced uneasily toward the door, as if longing to escape.

“Are you insulted at my presumption in thus catechising you?”

“I am sorry, sir, to find that you have lost none of your cynicism in your travels.”

“Do you regard travelling as a panacea for minds diseased?”

She looked up and smiled in his face—­a smile so bright and arch and merry, that even a stone might have caught the glow.

“Certainly not, Mr. Murray, as you are the most incorrigible traveller I have ever known.”

But there was no answering gleam on his darkening countenance as he watched her, and the brief silence that ensued was annoying to his companion, who felt less at ease every moment, and convinced that with such antagonism of character existing between them, all her peaceful, happy days at Le Bocage were drawing to a close.