"I think--I think, with your permission, we will go to another room," said the clergyman. Miss Carroll was still standing; she made no offer to go. Again she looked at their visitor, and this time it seemed to him that it was more than guardedly, that it was defiance. "Mamma," she said, "with your headache--for I know you have it still--are you not undertaking too much? Mr. Owen will excuse you. Or could I not take your place?" And she turned to Owen. "No," he answered; "you could not." And he said no more. He was aware that he was proceeding clumsily, but he could not help it. He found that he cared too much about it to do it gracefully or with skill. He recalled her slender, black-robed figure going towards the fir-wood, and his eyes grew more clouded than before. He turned away. "Of course, if Madam Carroll is suffering," he said--then he stopped; he did not want to postpone it again. Madam Carroll threw up her hands. "My dear Sara, you make so much of my poor little headache that Mr. Owen will think I am subject to headaches. But I am happy to say that I am not; as a general thing, they are mere feminine affectations. Come to the drawing-room, Mr. Owen. At this hour we shall not be interrupted." She led the way thither, and seated herself in her favorite chair, having first rolled forward a larger one for her guest. The spindle-legged furniture of the old-fashioned room had been covered by her own deft fingers with chintz of cream-color, enlivened with wreaths of bright flowers; over the windows and doors hung curtains of the same material. In this garden-like expanse Owen took his seat, collected himself and what he had to say in one quick moment of review, and then began. First, he asked her to pardon what was, in one way, the great liberty he was taking in speaking at all; in excuse he could only say that it seemed to him important--important to her own household. And in no household the world held had he a deeper, a more sincere, interest than in her own. Madam Carroll begged to recall to his remembrance that that was saying a great deal--"no household in the world." He did not answer this little speech, archly made. He took up his main subject. He told her that he had been unwilling to speak to her of it at all; that he should have greatly preferred speaking to the Major; but that had not been possible, at least for the present, as she was aware. The matter concerned itself with some facts he had lately learned about a person who had been generally received in Far Edgerley and also at the Farms--a person of whose history they really knew nothing, this--this musician-- "Are you pretending you do not know his name?" asked Madam Carroll. "I can tell you what it is if you have forgotten; it will make your story easier: Dupont--Louis Eugene Dupont."