Owen was astounded by her manner; he had never seen anything like it in her before. Her large blue eyes--of a blue lighter than his own--looked at him calmly, almost, it seemed to him, with a calm impertinence. "I had not forgotten his name," he answered, gravely. "I have had too much reason to remember it. He has given me anxiety for some time past, Madam Carroll. I have felt that he was not the person to be received among us as he has been received. We are rather a secluded mountain village, you know, and there has been little here to tempt him into betraying himself; but I have suspected him from the first, and now--" "You are rather inclined to suspect people, aren't you?" said Madam Carroll, with the same calm gaze. "Major Carroll would have suspected him also had he ever met him." "As it happens, my husband has met him. It was at one of our receptions; early in the evening, I think, before you came." "And he said nothing?" "Nothing." "I must go on in any case," said Owen; "I can do no otherwise. For it is not for my own sake I am speaking--" "Are you sure of that?" said his hostess, interrupting him again without ceremony. This time her tone had an amusement in it, an amusement not unmixed with sarcasm. "I should do it just the same though I were on the eve of leaving Far Edgerley forever, never expecting to see any of you again," he answered, with some heat. "It could hardly be a final parting, even then; for the world is not so large as you suppose, Mr. Owen. It hardly seems necessary, on the whole, to be so tragic," answered the lady, again adjusting the ruffle of her overskirt, and laughing a little. Owen was bewildered. He had thought that he knew her so well, he had thought that she was of all his parish his best and kindest friend; yet there she sat, within three feet of him, looking at him mockingly, turning all his earnest words into ridicule, laughing at him. He was no match for her in little sarcasms, and he was in no mood for that kind of warfare. He said no more about himself and his feelings; he simply gave her a plain outline of the facts which had recently come into his possession. Madam Carroll replied that she did not believe them. Such stories were always in circulation about handsome young men like Louis Dupont. They were told by other men--who were jealous of them. Owen, who had grown a little pale, quietly gave her his proofs. The scene of the affair was one of his own mission stations--the most distant one; he knew the young girl's father, and even the young girl herself. "Oh, it seems _you_ knew her too, then," said Madam Carroll, laughing. "I suppose she liked Dupont best."