There was suavity in her tone now, not unmixed with candour.  Sweetwater did not seem to relish this, for he moved uneasily and lost a shade of his self-satisfied attitude.  He had still to be made acquainted with all the ins and outs of this woman’s remarkable nature.

“We are waiting,” suggested Dr. Talbot.

She turned to face this new speaker, and Frederick was relieved from the sight of her tantalising smile.

“I will tell my story simply,” said she, “with the simple suggestion that you believe me; otherwise you will make a mistake.  While I was resting from a dance the other night, I heard two of the young people talking about the Zabels.  One of them was laughing at the old men, and the other was trying to relate some half-forgotten story of early love which had been the cause, she thought, of their strange and melancholy lives.  I was listening to them, but I did not take in much of what they were saying till I heard behind me an irascible voice exclaiming:  ’You laugh, do you?  I wonder if you would laugh so easily if you knew that these two poor old men haven’t had a decent meal in a fortnight?’ I didn’t know the speaker, but I was thrilled by his words.  Not had a good meal, these men, for a fortnight!  I felt as if personally guilty of their suffering, and, happening to raise my eyes at this minute and seeing through an open door the bountiful refreshments prepared for us in the supper room, I felt guiltier than ever.  Suddenly I took a resolution.  It was a queer one, and may serve to show you some of the oddities of my nature.  Though I was engaged for the next dance, and though I was dressed in the flimsy garments suitable to the occasion, I decided to leave the ball and carry some sandwiches down to these old men.  Procuring a bit of paper, I made up a bundle and stole out of the house without having said a word to anybody of my intention.  Not wishing to be seen, I went out by the garden door, which is at the end of the dark hall—­”

“Just as the band was playing the Harebell mazurka,” interpolated Sweetwater.

Startled for the first time from her careless composure by an interruption of which it was impossible for her at that time to measure either the motive or the meaning, she ceased to play with her fingers on the baluster rail and let her eyes rest for a moment on the man who had thus spoken, as if she hesitated between her desire to annihilate him for his impertinence and a fear of the cold hate she saw actuating his every word and look.  Then she went on, as if no one had spoken: 

“I ran down the hill recklessly.  I was bent on my errand and not at all afraid of the dark.  When I reached that part of the road where the streets branch off, I heard footsteps in front of me.  I had overtaken someone.  Slackening my pace, so that I should not pass this person, whom I instinctively knew to be a man, I followed him till I came to a high board fence.  It was that surrounding Agatha