"I don't know her." "Think."--Marian was still intent upon certainty.--"When I saw her she was both times dressed alike, though on her second visit her clothes, first new, had grown a little shabby. She wore a cloak--I forget its color, but it was dark--and a beaver hat. She----" He knew those clothes; he had reason to; but his interruption was in strict accord with his previous denial: "There are thousands of women answering that vague description. I am sure, however, that I don't know this one." Marian did not observe that, on his own showing, his assurance was without foundation. Her words had brought Mary vividly before her and, for a minute, she well-nigh forgot her own distress in the misery of that figure. "She has had a great deal of trouble," said Marian. "Why, from what she told me, these girls must be worse treated than the blacks in the Congo; they must be far worse off than our own American negro slaves used to be." "No doubt--if what she said was true. But I know it was not true. My profession has made me see a great deal of these poor women, and I know that if they are slaves it is because they want to be." He waved away the whole matter with a toss of his hand. He wanted some information, and he did not want to show why he wanted it. "That all goes to prove that if it was she who told you this foul story about me, then the story was that of a born liar," he declared. "You say she was here twice. What were the circumstances?" She told him. He breathed more freely. He had only to convince Marian and get her to quit her work in disgust before further gossip should reach her. "And so you don't know her?" she concluded. "No." "Nor Mrs. Rose Légère?" "I certainly know of that person," he said--it was the part of wisdom to admit some knowledge. "Nobody that knows anything about our police-courts, as I have had to know, can be entirely ignorant of her. She is one of the most notorious women in New York. I know a great deal about her, but, except for one occasion, when I saw her in a station-house, I have never set eyes on her in my life." He spoke with such precision that Marian caught a gratified breath. "Is she another Settlement visitor?" inquired Wesley, devoutly hoping that no miracle of reformation had, since their last meeting, been wrought upon Rose. "No, she is not. It was she that was said to have been one of your--your friends, until she made friends with your political enemies. The girl that told me was, of course, the Mary Morton I have mentioned. She said that you were intimate with this Mrs. Légère, and I understood that even Mary----" Dyker was genuinely glad to find some accusation that he could deny with truth. "Never!" he cried. Something in that word and his utterance of it made her look at him hard.