I was decidedly embarrassed.  Her manner was as frank and unconstrained as though I had not been shunning her for weeks past.

“If such a thing is possible,” I replied.

“Do you know a dish-cloth when you see one?”

I was doubtful.  But I procured the cloth from Miss Trevor and returned.  There was an air about Miss Thorn that was new to me.

“What an uncompromising man you are, Mr. Crocker,” she said to me.  “Once a person is unfortunate enough to come under the ban of your disapproval you have nothing whatever to do with them.  Now it seems that I have given you offence in some way.  Is it not so?”

“You magnify my importance,” I said.

“No temporizing, Mr. Crocker,” she went on, as though she meant to be obeyed; “sit down there, and let’s have it out.  I like you too well to quarrel with you.”

There was no resisting such a command, and I threw myself on the pebbles at her feet.

“I thought we were going to be great friends,” she said.  “You and Mr. Farrar were so kind to me on the night of my arrival, and we had such fun watching the dance together.”

“I confess I thought so, too.  But you expressed opinions then that I shared.  You have since changed your mind, for some unaccountable reason.”

She paused in her polishing, a shining dish in her hand, and looked down at me with something between a laugh and a frown.

“I suppose you have never regretted speaking hastily,” she said.

“Many a time,” I returned, warming; “but if I ever thought a judgment measured and distilled, it was your judgment of the Celebrity.”

“Does the study of law eliminate humanity?” she asked, with a mock curtsey.  “The deliberate sentences are sometimes the unjust ones, and men who are hung by weighed wisdom are often the innocent.”

“That is all very well in cases of doubt.  But here you have the evidences of wrong-doing directly before you.”

Three dishes were taken up, dried, and put down before she answered me.  I threw pebbles into the brook, and wished I had held my tongue.

“What evidence?” inquired she.  “Well,” said I, “I must finish, I suppose.  I had a notion you knew of what I inferred.  First, let me say that I have no desire to prejudice you against a person whom you admire.”

“Impossible.”

Something in her tone made me look up.

“Very good, then,” I answered.  “I, for one, can have no use for a man who devotes himself to a girl long enough to win her affections, and then deserts her with as little compunction as a dog does a rat it has shaken.  And that is how your Celebrity treated Miss Trevor.”

“But Miss Trevor has recovered, I believe,” said Miss Thorn.

I began to feel a deep, but helpless, insecurity.

“Happily, yes,” I assented.

“Thanks to an excellent physician.”

A smile twitched the corners of her mouth, as though she enjoyed my discomfiture.  I remarked for the fiftieth time how strong her face was, with its generous lines and clearly moulded features.  And a suspicion entered my soul.