Pauline smiled demurely. "Merely making some purchases at the corner, I fancy." "At the corner? Why, it's a cigar store." "I did not say _in_ the corner, _M. le colonel_. Kitty is fond of oranges." "Then it took half an hour to buy half a dozen oranges of that old Dago at the fruit-stand, did it? Still, that does not account for her blithe spirits. One would think that having sent one adorer away heart-broken; and another having vanished in disgrace (though that _was_ but a boy and girl affair), and a third laid up as the result of the second's rascality; a girl might be expected to suffer some pangs of remorse. I declare I believe some women have no more conscience than kittens, and our Kitty is one of them," said Harrod, half wrathfully. A moment's silence, then,-- "Well, _why_ should she not want to come and meet the judge?" I asked, with blundering persistency. "And _why_ should she be bright as a button this afternoon?" demanded Harrod. Pauline smiled with conscious superiority. "I can understand it readily, and am really surprised that you two profound thinkers should be so utterly in the dark. I'm not going to betray her, however; you ought to be able to see through it yourselves." And that silenced me completely. I record it with absolute humility that not until days afterwards was it made clear to me that when Pauline told Kitty the story of Amory's night-ride, the latter was able to account for the first time for his extraordinary conduct at Moreau's and the theatre; more than that, the child then knew what it was that had brought him in the dead of night to take one look at her window before going out to meet Peyton. As for her refusal to go to the depot, she simply felt unable to meet in that way Frank Amory's mother.