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“You know you don’t think that I will, Miss Sally. I’m not really such a bad fellow, now, am I?”

“You are a man–and I have no confidence whatever in men,” declared Miss Sally, wiping some very real tears from her eyes with a very unreal sort of handkerchief–one of the cobwebby affairs of lace her daintiness demanded.

“Miss Sally, why have you such a rooted distrust of men?” demanded Willard curiously. “Somehow, it seems so foreign to your character.”

“I suppose you think I am a perfect crank,” said Miss Sally, sighing. “Well, I’ll tell you why I don’t trust men. I have a very good reason for it. A man broke my heart and embittered my life. I’ve never spoken about it to a living soul, but if you want to hear about it, you shall.”

Miss Sally sat down on the second step of the stairs and tucked her wet handkerchief away. She clasped her slender white hands over her knee. In spite of her silvery hair and the little lines on her face she looked girlish and youthful. There was a pink flush on her cheeks, and her big black eyes sparkled with the anger her memories aroused in her.

“I was a young girl of twenty when I met him,” she said, “and I was just as foolish as all young girls are–foolish and romantic and sentimental. He was very handsome and I thought him–but there, I won’t go into that. It vexes me to recall my folly. But I loved him–yes, I did, with all my heart–with all there was of me to love. He made me love him. He deliberately set himself to win my love. For a whole summer he flirted with me. I didn’t know he was flirting–I thought him in earnest. Oh, I was such a little fool–and so happy. Then–he went away. Went away suddenly without even a word of goodbye. But he had been summoned home by his father’s serious illness, and I thought he would write–I waited–I hoped. I never heard from him–never saw him again. He had tired of his plaything and flung it aside. That is all,” concluded Miss Sally passionately. “I never trusted any man again. When my sister died and gave me her baby, I determined to bring the dear child up safely, training her to avoid the danger I had fallen into. Well, I’ve failed. But perhaps it will be all right–perhaps there are some men who are true, though Stephen Merritt was false.”

“Stephen–who?” demanded Willard abruptly. Miss Sally coloured.

“I didn’t mean to tell you his name,” she said, getting up. “It was a slip of the tongue. Never mind–forget it and him. He was not worthy of remembrance–and yet I do remember him. I can’t forget him–and I hate him all the more for it–for having entered so deeply into my life that I could not cast him out when I knew him unworthy. It is humiliating. There–let us lock up Eden and go home. I suppose you are dying to see Joyce and tell her your precious plot has succeeded.”

Willard did not appear to be at all impatient. He had relapsed into a brown study, during which he let Miss Sally lock up the house. Then he walked silently home with her. Miss Sally was silent too. Perhaps she was repenting her confidence–or perhaps she was thinking of her false lover. There was a pathetic droop to her lips, and her black eyes were sad and dreamy.

“Miss Sally,” said Willard at last, as they neared her house, “had Stephen Merritt any sisters?”

Miss Sally threw him a puzzled glance.

“He had one–Jean Merritt–whom I disliked and who disliked me,” she said crisply. “I don’t want to talk of her–she was the only woman I ever hated. I never met any of the other members of his family–his home was in a distant part of the state.”

Willard stayed with Joyce so brief a time that Miss Sally viewed his departure with suspicion. This was not very lover-like conduct.