"Oh, I understand, Patsy. You needn't defend Richard Ingraham to me. He ought to have known better, though. He ought to have known the town better. Why, Sabinsport really at heart was never so bitter against Germany as she is to-day. It was foolish, foolish of him; but it's wicked, wicked of them to doubt him. He has led us all. Why, my father, Patsy. See what he has done for my father, and for me! Why, he brought me back. Never would father have found me if it had not been for him." It was a very satisfied Patsy that sat down at the lunch table, but it was also a very curious one. There was one point that needed clearing up, and that was Otto Littman. And so, with a calculated unconsciousness that Nancy didn't catch at all, Patsy said, "I wish I knew, just for my own guidance, what there is in all the suspicion against Otto Littman. They are saying that he has done something fine, that has made up for all his early defense of Germany; but nobody seems to know what it is." And Nancy, quite unguarded, told her as much as she dared of what Otto himself had told her in confession, of how he had been carried away by the German dream of world empire, of how his vanity had led him in the first years of the war to aid the plotters in America, of how he had come to his senses when he saw that violence against life and property, as well as the spreading of German ideas (which he had considered legitimate), was intended, of his break with Max, of his determination to win back the confidence of Sabinsport, and of his plea that Nancy, whom he had always loved, the one woman whom he had ever thought to make his wife, should help him. "I could not do it, Patsy," she said, with tears; "but it has almost broken my heart not to stand by him as a friend in his hard, uphill fight. I understand perfectly how Otto was deluded. I know his vanity; and he has done a noble thing and the day will come when Sabinsport will understand, after the war is over. But it hurts me, oh, you don't know how it hurts me, not to be able to help. But what can I do? I do not love him. I shall never love him." And Patsy, the case quite clear in her mind, went back to Young Ralph, satisfied that she had done a good afternoon's work. It was a couple of hours later that Dick walked in on Nancy. Possibly, he said to himself, she had not heard of the sermon of the day before, for she came running down the steps to greet him, saying, "You are late. I hoped you would come." It even seemed to him she was warmer in her greetings than usual. They were hardly in before Reuben Cowder's car drew up, and he came into the drawing room. His greeting to Dick was curt and stern. He neither delayed nor hesitated about expressing his disapproval.