“Well, what can have happened since? Try and think! She has reasons, she says, which she thinks you will understand. When a woman says she has ‘reasons’ she means that some mischief-maker has told her something disagreeable. Now----” “Oh, my God! I see it now!” Seth stopped short in the road, and clenched his fists. “Well, what is it?” “She went into the house, and saw Isabel!” Seth continued, as if talking to himself. “What has that got to do with it?” Seth looked up at his brother with a blanching face, in which fright and amazement blended. “What is that line of Congreve’s about Hell having no fury like a woman scorned?” he asked mechanically. It was John’s turn to stare. Gradually a light began to spread in his mind, and make things visible whose existence he had not suspected before. “Well, you _are_ a simpleton!” he said. “Don’t I know it?” was the pained, contrite response. The brothers walked on a few yards in silence. Then John said “Of course, you needn’t tell me any more of this than you want to--but at least I can ask you--how _much_ of a fool have you made of yourself up at the farm?” “That’s hard to say. Just now I’m inclined to think that I am the champion ass of the world.” “Well, you’re displaying some sense _now_, anyway. What have you done?” “I haven’t done anything. That’s the foolish part of it all.” John stopped in turn, and looked his brother’s face attentively over. “Go on, now,” he said, “and tell me what there is of it. There’s no use in my butting my brains out against a stone wall, guessing at such an inscrutable mess as this seems to be.” “It’s hard to tell--there isn’t anything specially _to_ tell. I simply got sort of sentimental about Isabel, you know--she was lonely and disappointed in life, and my coming to the farm was about the only chance for company she got, and all that--and then I found the thing might go too far and so I stopped it--and to clinch the thing, asked Annie to marry me. That’s what there is of it.” “That’s good as far as it goes. Go on, youngster; out with the rest of it!” “I tell you that _is_ all.” “Humbug! Annie never wrote this letter on the strength of such philandering nonsense as that. You say Isabel must have told her something. What _was_ that something? Do you know?” “Yes!” The answer was so full of despondent pain, that John’s sympathy rose above his fraternal censariousness. “Come, my boy,” he said, “you’d better make a clean breast of it. It won’t seem half so bad, once you’ve told me. And if I can help you, you know I will.”