"Come," said she, trying to speak lightly, "I don't see why we need stand. We are not rehearsing private theatricals. It was very kind of you to take the trouble to come all the way up here, but you must see that my nerves are all on edge. The shock has completely upset me." "Poor girl!" he said. There was a genuine ring in his voice which irritated while it touched her. She hated to feel that he was really hurt. It made her seem the more deeply guilty, and she unconsciously desired to discover in him some excuse for her own shortcomings. "Oh, it's over now," she responded. "Let's talk of something else." "I'd be glad to," Stanford replied, "but I can't seem to. I want to know how you escaped. I won't ask you to tell me now, but I keep thinking about it." "I'm afraid I can't tell you much. I remember a tremendous crash, and being thrown against Mr. Wynne"-- "Mr. Wynne?" The tone showed Berenice that Stanford did not attach especial importance to the question, but asked only from a natural curiosity. Nevertheless she could not keep her voice from, hurrying a little as she answered:-- "Mr. Wynne is a young clergyman who was in the seat next to mine. He's a cousin of Mrs. Staggchase." "Oh, a clergyman," Stanford echoed. The tone seemed to her excited mood to be full of intolerable superiority. "He may be a clergyman," she retorted with unnecessary warmth, "but he is a gentleman and a hero. He saved my life!" "Oh, he did!" The exclamation stung her beyond endurance. She sprang up with flashing eyes. "Mr. Stanford," she exclaimed, "I don't know what you mean to insinuate, but you will please to remember that you are speaking of the man that saved me, and of my grandmother's guest." "Your grandmother's guest? Do you mean that he is staying here?" "Certainly he is. Why shouldn't he be?" The young man rose, and stood looking at her a moment; then he began to pace up and down, his gaze fixed on the floor. Berenice felt herself being swept away by tumultuous feelings which she could neither compel nor understand. Her mind was in confusion, out of which rose most definitely the desire that Stanford would go and leave her in peace. "There is no reason why I should question the right of Mrs. Morison to choose her own guests," said Stanford at length, pausing, and speaking with an evident effort to be entirely calm; "and as I know nothing of this Mr. Wynne, I shouldn't in any case have a right to say anything about him. You can't wonder, though, that I'm jealous of him for having had the luck to save your life, or that when I come here and find you so suddenly different and this man staying in the house and a hero in your eyes"--