very wrong in that, seeing all they have done for me in the past--Mr. Tilney, Mrs. Skelton and some others. But after I saw you a little while I----” she paused and looked at him, then away, “I didn’t think you were that kind of a man, you see, and so--well, it’s different now. I don’t want to do anything to hurt you. Really I don’t. I couldn’t--now.” “So you admit now that you do know Mr. Tilney,” he commented sourly, but not without a sense of triumph behind it all. “I just told you that,” she said. She stopped, and Gregory stared at her suspiciously. That she liked him was plain, and in a sense it was different from that of a mere passing flirtation, and as for himself--well, he couldn’t help liking her in a genial way. He was free to admit that to himself, in spite of her trickery, and that she was attractive, and as yet she personally had not done anything to him, certainly nothing that he could prove. She seemed even now so young, although so sophisticated and wise, and much about her face, its smoothness, the delicate tracery of hair about her forehead, the drooping pout of the upper lip, sharpened his interest and caused him to meditate. “Well?” he inquired after a time. “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t turn on me so and leave me,” she pleaded. “I haven’t done anything to you, have I? Not yet, anyhow.” “That’s just the point--not yet. There’s the whole story in a nutshell.” “Yes, but I promise you faithfully that I won’t, that I don’t intend to. Really I don’t. You won’t believe me, but that’s true. And I won’t, I give you my word,--truly. Why won’t you still be friends with me? I can’t tell you any more about myself now than I have--not now--but I will some time, and I wish you would still be friends with me. I promise not to do anything to cause you trouble. I haven’t really, have I? Have I?” “How should I know?” he answered testily and roughly, the while believing that this was a deliberate attempt on her part to interest him in spite of himself, to get him not to leave yet. “It seems to me you’ve done enough, being with these people. You’ve led me into going about with them, for one thing. I would never have gone with them on most of these trips except for you. Isn’t that enough? What more do you want? And why can’t you tell me now,” he demanded, feeling in a way the authority of a victor, “who these people are and all about them? I’d like to know. It might be a help to me, if you really wanted to do something for me. What are their plans, their game?”