nancy spent the evening in the valley of humiliation, barth spent it in the office with the lady.

“but what did you say to irritate her?” the lady asked at length, when barth, by devious courses, had brought the conversation around to nancy.

“oh, nothing. i wouldn’t irritate miss howard for any consideration,” he returned eagerly.

“but she was irritated.”

“y—es; but i didn’t do it.”

the lady smiled. liking barth as she did, she could still realize that his point of view might be antagonistic to a girl like nancy. moreover, she too had seen barth, that noon. she too had wondered at the unaccountable elation of his manner; and she had recorded the impression that, when a narrow britisher begins to expand his limits, the broad american would better make haste to seek shelter.

“tell me all about it,” she said kindly.

barth’s feigned arrogance of manner had fallen from him; it was a most humble-minded britisher who stood before the lady, and the lady pitied him. barth’s eyes looked tired; the corners of his mouth drooped, and dejection sat heavy upon him.

the lady turned a chair about until it faced her own.

“sit down and tell me all about it, mr. barth,” she repeated.

barth obeyed. later, alone in his room, he wondered how it was that he had been betrayed into speaking so frankly to a comparative stranger; yet even then he felt no regrets. a petted younger son, he had been too long deprived of feminine companionship and understanding. now that it was offered, he accepted it eagerly. moreover, barth was by no means the first lonely youth to pour the story of his woes into the lady’s ear.

seated with the light falling full upon his honest, boyish face, he plunged at once into his confession, with the absolute unreserve that only a man customarily reserved can show.

“it is just a case of miss howard,” he said bluntly. “she is an american, and not at all like the girls i have known, treats you like a good fellow one minute, and freezes you up the next. i can’t seem to understand her at all.”

“what makes you try?” the lady asked.

it never seemed to occur to the young fellow to blush, as he answered,—

“because i like her a great deal better than any other girl i ever saw.”

in spite of herself, the lady smiled at the unqualified terms of his reply.

“it hasn’t taken you long to find it out.”

“no. but what’s the use of waiting to make up your mind about a thing of that sort?” barth responded, as he plunged his hands into his trouser pockets. “you like a person, or else you don’t. i like miss howard; but, by george, i can’t understand her in the least!”

“is there any use of trying?” the lady inquired.

barth stared at her blankly.

“oh, rather! how else would i know how to get on with her?”

“but, by your own story, you don’t succeed in getting on with her.”

barth closed the circle of her argument.

“no. because i can’t seem to understand her.”

“are you sure she understands herself?”

“oh, yes. miss howard is very clever, you know.”

“perhaps. it doesn’t always follow. and are you sure she cares to have you understand her?”

the young englishman winced at the question.

“what should she have against me?” he asked directly.

“i am not saying that she has anything,” the lady answered, in swift evasion. “sometimes it is to their best friends that girls show their most contradictory sides.”

“oh. you mean it is one of her american ways?”

“yes, if you choose to call it that.”

barth shook his head.

“miss howard is very american,” he observed a little regretfully.

the lady smiled.

“and, my dear boy, so are you very british.”

“of course. i mean to be,” barth answered quietly.

“and perhaps miss howard finds it hard to understand your british ways.”

barth looked perplexed.

“oh, no. i think not,” he said slowly. “she never acts at all embarrassed, when she is with me. in fact,” he laughed deprecatingly; “i am generally the one to be embarrassed, when we are together.”

there was a short pause. then barth continued thoughtfully, as if from the heart of his reverie,—

“and i didn’t like her especially, at first. she seemed a bit—er—cocksure and—er—energetic. now i am beginning to like her more and more.”

“have you seen much of her?”

barth shook his head.

“no. it is only once that we have had any real talk together. that was yesterday, at the library. it’s a queer old place, and one talks there in spite of one’s self. we had a good time. but generally those other fellows are around in the way.”

the lady raised her brows interrogatively.

“mr. brock and that frenchman,” barth explained. “they are always with her; they haven’t any hesitation in coming into the drawing-room and carrying her off, just as i am getting ready to talk to her.”

a blot on the lady’s account book demanded her full attention for a moment. then she looked up at barth again.

“why don’t you try the same tactics?” she asked.

“i beg your pardon?”

“why don’t you carry her off, just as mr. brock is getting ready to talk to her?”

“because he is so quick that he gets right about it, before i have time to begin. mr. brock has a good deal of the american way, himself,” mr. cecil barth added, with an accent of extreme disfavor.

the lady smiled again.

“i think you’ll have to develop some american ways, yourself, mr. barth,” she suggested.

again the note of dejection came into his voice.

“i tried. tried it, this afternoon.”

“and?” she said interrogatively.

“it was all wrong.”

“how do you mean?”

“i don’t know. i thought i did it just as mr. brock does. i went into the drawing-room and found them together, just the way he has so often found us. i began to talk to her just as he does, only of course i wouldn’t think of chaffing her. you know he chaffs her, and she can’t seem to make him stop,” barth added, in hasty explanation.

“what did you talk to her about?” the lady queried.

“that’s just it. i didn’t get started talking at all. i just asked her if she wouldn’t like to talk.”

once more the lady bent over the blot.

“what did you invite her to talk about?” she asked quietly.

“sainte anne-de-beaupré and all that.”

there was a pause. then,—

“go on,” said the lady.

“we’d been talking about it in the library, just the afternoon before, and she seemed interested, asked about my accident and my nurse and all. really, we were just beginning to get on capitally, when she had to go. i thought the best thing to do would be to begin where we left off; but she turned very cross, wouldn’t say a word to me and finally picked up her books and walked out of the room. i don’t see what i could have done to displease her.” and, putting on his glasses, barth stared at the lady with disconsolate, questioning blue eyes.

the lady laughed a little. nevertheless, she felt a deep longing to scold nancy, to give fate a sound box on the ear and to take mr. cecil barth into her motherly embrace. she liked his frankness, liked the under note of respect which mingled in his outspoken admiration for nancy. she could picture the whole scene: barth’s nervous assumption of ease confronted with the nonchalant assurance of brock, nancy’s hidden amusement at the tentative request for polite conversation, and her open consternation at the subject which barth had proposed for discussion. it was funny. she looked upon the scene with the eyes of nancy and brock, yet her whole womanly sympathy lay with the englishman, an open-hearted, tongue-tied alien in a land of easy speech. barth’s hand rested on the corner of her desk. bending forward, she laid her own hand across his fingers.

“don’t worry, mr. barth,” she said kindly. “you and miss howard will be good friends in time. it is an odd position, your meeting here on neutral soil. your whole ways of life are so different that you find it hard to understand each other. i am half-way between you, and i know you both. what is more, i like you both, and i’d like to see you good friends. leave something to time, and a great deal to miss howard. and—forgive me, my dear boy, but i am quite old enough to be your mother—i would let the american ways take care of themselves, and just be my own english self. if miss howard is going to like you at all, it will be for yourself, not for any misfit manners you may choose to put on.”

“but, the question is, is she going to like me at all?” barth said despondingly.

the lady’s eyes roved over him from the parting of his yellow hair to the toes of his unmistakably british shoes.

“forgive my bluntness,” she said, with a smile; “if i say that i don’t see how she can very well help it.”

half an hour later, she knocked at nancy’s door.

“may i come in?” she asked blithely. “all the evening, i have been talking to a most downcast young englishman, and now i have come up to administer justice to you. the justice will be tempered with mercy; nevertheless, i think you deserve a lecture.”

“your englishman is an idiot,” nancy observed dispassionately; “and i don’t deserve any lecture at all. however, go on.”

crossing the room, the lady turned on the electric light.

“nancy howard,” she said sternly; “your voice was suspicious enough; but your eyes betray you. you’ve been crying.”

“what if i have?” the girl asked defiantly.

the lady’s quick eye caught the glitter of a gold coin on the dressing-table. then she turned back to nancy.

“girls like you don’t cry for nothing,” she remarked. “may i sit down on the bed?”

nancy nodded. then she replied to the first remark.

“i wasn’t crying for nothing. i was crying over my conscience.”

“what has your conscience been doing?”

“pricking,” the girl answered frankly. “i hate to be nasty to people; but now and then i am driven into it.”

“mr. barth?”

“yes, mr. barth,” nancy assented, with an accent of finality. “now go on with your lecture.”

the lady laughed.

“really, nancy, you sometimes take away even my canadian breath. i can imagine that you leave mr. barth gasping.”

“mr. barth would gasp in a stilly vacuum,” nancy replied tranquilly.

“very likely. it is possible that you might do likewise. but to my point. was it quite fair, nancy, to encourage the boy to talk about the sainte anne-de-beaupré episode, and then snub him, the next time he alluded to it?”

“did he tell you any such tale as that?” nancy demanded, in hot wrath.

“he—he implied it.”

“and you believed him?”

“i—i couldn’t understand your doing it.” the lady began to wonder whether the promised lecture were to be given or received.

nancy sprang up and walked the length of the room.

“oh, the horrid little cad!” she said explosively.

the lady turned champion of the absent englishman.

“he’s not a cad, nancy; he is a thoroughbred little englishman. i have seen his type before, though never so extreme a case. he is frank and honest as a boy can be. he’s born to his british ways, as we are born to ours. it is only that you’re not used to him, and don’t understand him.”

“he doesn’t leave much to the imagination,” nancy observed scathingly. then she dropped down beside the lady, and looked her straight in the eyes. “i don’t want you to be thinking horrid things of me,” she said slowly. “i don’t want you to think i have been two-sided with mr. barth. after what happened at sainte anne-de-beaupré, i have tried to keep out of his way as much as possible. it has been a miserable chance that has brought us into such close quarters; a recognition wasn’t going to be pleasant for either of us. but, every time i meet the man, he seems possessed with an insane desire to babble to me about his ankle. i could tell more about it than he can, for i was in league with the doctor, and heard all the professional details. a dozen times, i have been on the very verge of betraying myself. last night, it reached a climax. he found me alone in the library, and he began to talk. really, he was more agreeable than i ever knew him before. but you know how it is: the presence of a grass widow always moves you to rake up all the divorce scandals of your experience. before we had talked for ten minutes, the man was calmly informing me that he was really very fond of his nurse, that, in the secret recesses of his heart, he called her his good sainte anne, that he wished he could meet her again, and finally that he was very sorry he had tipped her.”

“indeed!”

“no; i don’t mean that,” nancy protested hastily. “you are the disloyal one now. he didn’t imply that she had not deserved the tip. his regrets were for sentimental reasons, not frugal. he was very nice and honest about it, and i never liked him half so well.”

“and showed it,” the lady added gently.

“very likely i did. i don’t see why not. but, to-day!” nancy paused.

“what happened?”

“didn’t he tell you?”

“only his side of it. still, i could imagine the rest.”

“no; you couldn’t. no one could, without having seen it. he came dashing, fairly splashing, into the parlor where mr. brock and i were squabbling over politics. only a little while before, i had been defending him to mr. brock, telling him that mr. barth was really a gentleman and clever, that i liked him extremely. and then, on the heels of that statement, the man came whacking into the room, interrupted our talk without a shadow of an apology and then, after acting like a crazy being, he capped the climax of his sins by specifically inviting me to talk to him some more about sainte anne.”

“well?”

“well.”

the rising cadence was met by the falling one. then silence followed.

“well,” nancy resumed at length; “you see my predicament. mr. brock knows the whole story; i let it out to him, the day we met. i had no idea i should ever meet mr. barth again, and i used no names. mr. brock patched together the two ends of the story, and told m. st. jacques; and it has been all i could do to keep them from using it as an instrument of torture on poor mr. barth. to-day, i knew mr. brock was furious at him; i knew he was longing to say something, and, worst of all, i knew he thought, as you did, that i had been coaxing mr. barth to make an idiot of himself.”

“well?” the lady said again.

“and he does it, without being coaxed,” nancy responded mutinously. then she relented. “but he was so pitifully bent on making a fool of himself, just when i had been pleading his cause to the very best of my ability! he babbled at us till i was on the very verge of frenzy. stop him i could not. he absolutely refused to know when he was snubbed. at last, i fled from the scene and took mr. brock with me, and, for all i know to the contrary, the man may be sitting there in the parlor, babbling still.”

nancy laughed; but the tears were near the surface.

“and then?” the lady asked gently.

“then i came up here and bemoaned my sins,” nancy answered, with utter frankness. “i hate to be hateful; but i lost my head, and couldn’t help it. now i am sorry, for i truly like mr. barth, and i know i scratched him till he felt it clear down through his veneering. he has not only spoiled my whole evening; but, worse than that, i have an apology on my hands, and i really don’t see how i am going to make it, without being too specific.”