he who is responsible for my being caught in this--this annoying
predicament."
At something in the way the lady said that, Varney unconsciously chipped
twenty years off her age and conceded that she might be no more than
thirty-two.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said with a laugh. "I should say that Mr.
Hare has already had quite enough troubles for one night."
"Oh--then you have seen him this evening?"
"I had the pleasure of meeting him on the square not half an hour ago."
Each waited for the other to say more; and it was the lady who yielded.
She went on hesitatingly, yet somehow as if she were not unwilling to
justify herself to this stranger in the curious position in which she
found herself.
"It--is very strange--and unlike him," she said doubtfully. "He was to
call for me--at quarter past seven--and take me home. I was at the
seamstress's, perhaps quarter of a mile up the road. I waited and
waited--and then--Oh--what was that, do you know?"
"Only this old floor cracking. Don't flatter it by noticing. How odd to
find, meeting in this way, that we are both searching for the same man.
Isn't it?"
"It--seems to me even odder to find that he is not searching for me."
She was sitting, so he judged from the sound, about fifteen feet away.
There was coldness in her voice as she spoke of the candidate. Varney
felt sorry for that young man when he next held converse with her. From
her voice he had also gathered that the dark rather frightened her, and
that the presence of an unknown man had not allayed her uneasiness;
though something of her reserve had vanished, he thought, when she found
that the intruder knew Mr. Hare.
"Oh, but he was--is!" he cried encouragingly.
"I'm positive that he's searching for you at this minute. Why, of
course--certainly! That would explain the whole thing."
Sitting damply on the dark stairway, he told of J. Pinkney Hare's
evidently impromptu experiences in the public square, which had
undoubtedly knocked from his mind all memory of his engagement at the
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