Facing her in the bright light, the questioner’s eyes were like gimlets on her face. Mrs. Willers saw its distressed uneasiness, but could read no further. Three days before she had received Mrs. Shackleton’s letter, and had been amazed by its contents. She could neither assign to herself nor to Mrs. Shackleton a reason for the girl’s unexplainable conduct. “I can’t explain it to you,” said Mariposa. “I--I--didn’t want to go. That was all.” “But you wanted to go only a month or two before, when Shackleton himself made you the offer?” Mariposa nodded without answering. “But why? That’s the part that’s so extraordinary. You’d take it from him, but not from his wife.” “A person might change her mind, mightn’t she?” “A fool might, but a reasonable woman, without a cent, with hardly a friend, how could she?” “Well, she has.” “Mariposa, look me in the eye.” Mrs. Willers met the amber-clear eyes and saw, with an uneasy thrill, that there was knowledge in them there had not been before. It was not the limpid glance of the candid, unspoiled youth it had once been. She felt a contraction of pain at her heart, as though she had read the same change in Edna’s eyes. “What made you change your mind?--that’s what I want to know.” Mariposa lowered her lids. “I can’t tell. What makes anybody change his mind? You think differently. Things happen that make you think differently.” “Well, what’s happened to make _you_ think differently?” The lines appeared again on the smooth forehead. She shifted her glance to the window and then back to the hands on her lap. “Suppose I don’t want to tell? I’m not a little girl like Edna, to have to tell every thought I have. Mayn’t I have a secret, Mrs. Willers?” She looked at her interlocutor with an attempt at a coaxing smile. Mrs. Willers saw that it was an effort, and remained grave. “I don’t want you to have secrets from me, dear, no more than I would Edna. Mariposa,” she said in a lowered voice, leaning forward and putting her hand on the girl’s knee, “is it because of some man?” Mariposa looked up quickly. The elder woman saw that, for a moment, she was startled. “Some man!” she exclaimed. “What man?” “You haven’t changed your mind because of Essex?” “Essex!” She slowly crimsoned, and Mrs. Willers kept her pitiless eyes on the rising flood of color. “Oh, my dear girl,” she said almost in an agony, “don’t say you’ve got fond of him.” “I don’t like Mr. Essex. I--I--can’t bear him.” Mrs. Willers knew enough of human nature not to be at all convinced by this remark. “He’s not the man for any woman to give her heart to. He’s not the man to take seriously. He’s never loved anything in his life but himself. Don’t let yourself be fooled by him. He’s handsome, and he’s about the smoothest talker I ever ran up against. But don’t you be crazy enough to fall in love with him.” “I tell you, I don’t like him.”