"Why do I do it?" she said proudly. "Why should I not do it? My cousin has as much claim on me as the Munros have, and she needs me a great deal more. If I must stand or fall by my relatives, I choose to fall with Rachel Simpson rather than to stand with Lady Munro." She rose to go, but he caught her hand. "You said once that you had no wish to measure your strength against mine," he said, in a low voice. "I don't mean to let you go, so perhaps you had better sit down. It would be a pity to have a scene." "Let my hand go in any case." "Honest Injun?" She yielded unwillingly with a laugh. "Honest Injun," she said. "As we are here, I will stay for ten minutes," and she laid her watch on the table. "That is right. I never knew any difficulty that was made easier by refusing to eat one's lunch." "I don't admit that I am in any difficulty, and your way, too, is clear." She made a movement of her head in the direction of the door. "I am only sorry that you did not give me a chance to tell you all this before you introduced me to Lady Kirkhope. If I had known you were coming, I should have given you a hint to avoid me." "Miss Maclean," he said, "will you allow me to say that you are a little bit morbid?" She met his eyes with a frank full glance from her own. "That is true," she said, with sudden conviction. "And for a woman like you to see that you are morbid is to cease to be morbid." "I am sure I don't want to be; but indeed it is so difficult to see what is simple and right. I have often smiled to think how I told you in summer, that the 'great, puzzling subject of compromise' had never come into my life." "You said on the same occasion, if I remember rightly, that my life was infinitely franker and more straightforward than yours. I presume you don't say so still?" "I do, with all my heart." "H'm. Do you think it likely that I would go routing up poor relations for the pleasure of devoting myself exclusively to their society?" Mona's face flushed. "Mr Dickinson," she said, "I ought to tell you that I arranged to come to my cousin before I met the Munros. I don't say that I should not have done it in any case, but I made the arrangement at a time when, with many friends, I was practically alone in the world. And also,"--she thought of Colonel Lawrence's story,--"even apart from the Munros, if I had known all that I know now, about circumstances in the past, I am not sure that I should have come at all. That is all my heroics are worth." "You are a magnificently honest woman." "I am not quite sure that I am not the greatest humbug that ever lived. Two minutes more. Do you bear in mind that Lady Kirkhope said she would call on me?" "I will see to that. Am I forgiven for introducing you to her?" Mona smiled. "I shall take my revenge by introducing you to a much greater woman, my friend Doris Colquhoun." "When am I to meet you again? May I call?" "No." "How do you get home to-night?"