"Ah, yes, you did!" I cried eagerly. "It hurt me not a little that you should think he was anything to me."
"I can't forgive myself for being so foolish," he said. "Now that Miss Dicks has enlightened me a little, I see what a stupid blunderer I was. No wonder you were angry with me."
"Oh, Paulina!" I said inwardly. "So this is the result of your long and interesting talk!"
Aloud I said, "It was unreasonable of me to be angry. No doubt it was easy for you to make such a mistake."
"Well, there is some excuse for me," he said, "for when I overtook Marshman that night, after he scrambled over the wall in front of us, and demanded an explanation of his extraordinary conduct, he confessed to me jestingly that he was smitten with Mrs. Lucas's pretty niece, and had committed the trespass with the hope of getting a private talk with her."
"How could he say that? Agneta is not Aunt Patty's niece," I exclaimed, forgetting how much I was revealing.
"Just so," he said with a smile. "Now you see how I was misled; and when you reproached me so indignantly with misjudging another, I never doubted that he had completely beguiled you."
"Oh, but you could not have thought that I blamed you for misjudging him," I protested. "Of course, I was indignant at your deeming me likely to be attracted by such a man."
"But I did think that," he said. "I confess to the most crass stupidity, and I humbly beg your forgiveness. It may soften your just resentment to know that I have not gone unpunished. I have suffered intensely from that mistake. It threw a shadow over all my life."
"And when you saw me on the platform at Liverpool Street on that afternoon when I ought to have been at the garden party—what did you think then?" I demanded. "Some dreadful thing, of course."