"Oh, yes, I like it well enough," she said indifferently. "It seems rather pretty about here."
"How well you look, Nan!" said my father. "You are not like the same girl whom I saw off from Liverpool Street four months ago. I hope 'Gay Bowers' will do as much for your cousin; she needs some roses badly. Why, Miss Smith, who would have thought of seeing you here? How are you?"
To my amazement I saw that it was Miss Cottrell whom he thus addressed. She shrank back, her face crimson.
"You are mistaken," she stammered, "my name is not Smith."
"Then you have changed it since I last saw you; you are married, I suppose," he said pleasantly; "for we certainly called you Miss Smith at the 'Havelock Arms.'"
"The ''Avelock Arms!'" she stammered. Her h's always dropped when she was agitated.
"Why, father, this is Miss Cottrell," I said, pitying her embarrassment as she grew redder and redder.
"Then she has changed her name," said my father, looking at her in astonishment, "for it was as Miss Smith I knew her in Devonshire. I used to stay sometimes at her uncle's inn, a very pleasant place of sojourn on the border of Dartmoor, where I went for the sake of fishing. But it must be nearly twenty years since I was last there. I heard only the other day that John Smith and his wife were both dead and the inn had changed hands. That is true, I suppose?"
He looked keenly at her as he spoke, and her eyes fell beneath his gaze. She was crimson. Her face was the picture of misery and shame. But it was clear that my father had not the least doubt of her identity with Miss Smith, and she dared not deny it.
"Yes, my uncle and aunt have passed away," she said awkwardly. "I do not remember that I ever saw you at their house. There are so many Smiths in the world that I thought I should like another name and took that of Cottrell, which was my mother's. I hope there is no harm in that?"