“If it wasn’t for you, Miss Holmes, I believe I’d have a try for him myself, in spite of his gray hair and quick temper—­for Mrs. Maxwell says he has a pretty quick temper, but it’s all over in a minute,” said Wilhelmina, half in jest and wholly in earnest.

As for me, I gave up going out at all, even to church.  I fretted and pined and lost my appetite and never wrote a line in my blank book.  Nancy was half frantic and insisted on dosing me with her favorite patent pills.  I took them meekly, because it is a waste of time and energy to oppose Nancy, but, of course, they didn’t do me any good.  My trouble was too deep-seated for pills to cure.  If ever a woman was punished for telling a lie I was that woman.  I stopped my subscription to the Weekly Advocate because it still carried that wretched porous plaster advertisement, and I couldn’t bear to see it.  If it hadn’t been for that I would never have thought of Fenwick for a name, and all this trouble would have been averted.

One evening, when I was moping in my room, Nancy came up.

“There’s a gentleman in the parlor asking for you, Miss Charlotte.”

My heart gave just one horrible bounce.

“What—­sort of a gentleman, Nancy?” I faltered.

“I think it’s that Fenwick man that there’s been such a time about,” said Nancy, who didn’t know anything about my imaginary escapades, “and he looks to be mad clean through about something, for such a scowl I never seen.”

“Tell him I’ll be down directly, Nancy,” I said quite calmly.

As soon as Nancy had clumped downstairs again I put on my lace fichu and put two hankies in my belt, for I thought I’d probably need more than one.  Then I hunted up an old Advocate for proof, and down I went to the parlor.  I know exactly how a criminal feels going to execution, and I’ve been opposed to capital punishment ever since.

I opened the parlor door and went in, carefully closing it behind me, for Nancy has a deplorable habit of listening in the hall.  Then my legs gave out completely, and I couldn’t have walked another step to save my life.  I just stood there, my hand on the knob, trembling like a leaf.

A man was standing by the south window looking out; he wheeled around as I went in, and, as Nancy said, he had a scowl on and looked angry clear through.  He was very handsome, and his gray hair gave him such a distinguished look.  I recalled this afterward, but just at the moment you may be quite sure I wasn’t thinking about it at all.

Then all at once a strange thing happened.  The scowl went right off his face and the anger out of his eyes.  He looked astonished, and then foolish.  I saw the color creeping up into his cheeks.  As for me, I still stood there staring at him, not able to say a single word.

“Miss Holmes, I presume,” he said at last, in a deep, thrilling voice.  “I—­I—­oh, confound it!  I have called—­I heard some foolish stories and I came here in a rage.  I’ve been a fool—­I know now they weren’t true.  Just excuse me and I’ll go away and kick myself.”