“Oh, don’t be so fierce about it, Addie! I couldn’t help it. She’s just what I said--a girl I met at Paddock’s mission at Ironstead. She’s an art student; Fanny is helping her; she’s one of Fanny’s enthusiasms.” “Do you suppose--do you suppose she saw us?” “I doubt it; she didn’t have time!” and Wayne laughed. “But it would make no difference if she did.” “Oh, you think it wouldn’t! Well, it might make a lot of difference to me--had you thought of that?” “Why, of course, Addie, it would be unfortunate, deplorable; but there’s no reason for worrying about it. She was running from a man--the man happened to be Joe, my chauffeur.” “Then it _is_ a pretty business! How do you know that Joe didn’t come here to look for us?” “Because Joe is not that sort of fellow. I know him well; he’s devoted to me.” “He may have thought this was another; I don’t like it. I trusted you absolutely and you have made a clumsy mess of it. And besides, you had no business to do _that_--what you were doing--you took advantage of my kindness and sympathy.” “For heaven’s sake, cheer up! If the girl hadn’t broken in here just at the wrong moment it would have been all right, wouldn’t it?” He was laughing in an effort to blunt the edge of her displeasure, but his attitude accentuated her anger. “No, it would not! It was wrong and wicked of you! But what have you done with Joe?” “He’s going to run the machine home--all of us--including Miss Morley.” “Just after you caught him pursuing a helpless girl through a snow-storm in a wild place in the country! Do you mean to say you haven’t discharged him? You have certainly lost your mind!” “You wouldn’t have me leave him here, would you, to walk in?” “It might be interesting to know just what _she_ was doing away out here in a storm like this, with a man following her.” “Well, that’s about as broad as it is long. I don’t believe we’d better go into that! She’s a simple little girl from the country and our world is a big dark mystery to her; very likely she’s speculating as to what you and I are doing here in a snow-storm, with all the evidences of a quiet little party--to say nothing of the whiskey bottle and all the glasses full?” He spread his hands over the table, which was not eloquent of abstinence. “It looks like the merriest kind of an orgy, doesn’t it? And it’s all my fault--every bit of it. No matter what they say, it simply does not pay to be good! Here’s a whole quart of the best rye in the world, used merely to demonstrate my own powers of resistance. There isn’t a man in the whole State of Pennsylvania who would believe me if I swore I had poured out whiskey just to smell it.”