“What is the use of arguing about it all?” she demanded restlessly. “You never could see the truth of it; no man could. I don’t want to beg off and make excuses. I have been in a false position from the start. I never made it, nor even sought it. It all came from chance. Still, it has been impossible for me to get myself out of it; but truly, Mr. Barth,” she looked up at him appealingly; “from the first hour I met you at Sainte Anne until to-day, I have never meant to be disloyal to you.”
“Then why couldn’t you have told me you had met me before?” he asked, returning to his first question with a curious persistency.
Nancy fenced with the question.
“But, strictly speaking, I had not met you.”
Barth’s eyes opened to their widest limit.
“Oh, really,” he said blankly.
“No; not in any social sense. Nobody introduced us. I was just your nurse.”
Suddenly, for the first time since the discovery of Nancy’s identity, there flashed upon Barth’s mind the thought of the guinea. He turned scarlet. Then he rallied.
“Miss Howard,” he said slowly, as he took the chair at her side; “I am not sure you were the only one who has been placed in a false position.”
The girl’s irritation vanished, and she laughed.