"Well?"
I glanced meaningly at Miss Fluette. "Considering all the circumstances, can you confide in me with propriety—just now?"
"To be sure," he replied, promptly and earnestly; "as well now as any time. You may readily imagine that to sit here and unfold affairs so intimately personal is a matter of expediency and not of choice."
He had missed my point altogether; I wanted to spare the girl. But it was n't for me to warn him of the complications which were likely to arise from his disclosures.
"I can well believe that," said I. "Go on."
CHAPTER VII
HOW THE ERRAND ENDED
"Don't you know, Swift," Maillot resumed, after a meditative pause, "that it's a mighty easy matter to misjudge a man? Certain reports concerning a person become current, for example, and before we know it—perhaps without giving the matter a thought—we gradually grow to accept them as accurately descriptive of his personality.
"I have wondered more than once during the past week whether we have n't an entirely erroneous conception of every prominent man whom we don't know intimately. 'By your actions be ye judged'—if we were, most of us would be condemned out of hand.