THE TANGLED WEB.
The girl's lids had drooped again, hiding the expression in her eyes, while the rest of her face told Barry nothing. He was just beginning to wonder whether she was very angry, when suddenly she threw back her head, and her lips parted in a peal of low laughter.
"Of course there were!" she exclaimed. "How absurd you are to take it so seriously, Mr. Lawrence! If I'd been in your place, I should have hated a girl I thought had played me such a trick. I think you're very nice, indeed, not to have thought worse things about me than you did, and I really haven't anything to forgive."
"You're sure of that?" he asked eagerly, his face glowing.
"Perfectly! And now that's over," she went on briskly, "don't you want to hear my fairy tale?"
"You bet I do!" he asserted, with more force than elegance. "I've been eaten up with curiosity ever since your letter came. It sounded as wildly impossible as an Arabian Night."
She laughed. "It was—it is yet. I'm really not quite certain that it isn't all a wonderfully vivid dream; though, as I wrote you, the clothes do seem awfully convincing. You know, a person never by any chance dreams the sort of dresses one would like to have. They're always utterly impossible."
She clasped one knee with both hands in a boyish way, and fixed her dancing eyes upon his face.
"I was a little frightened when I said good-by that night," she began. "So many horrid things had happened that I wasn't even sure of Mrs. Weston, or Sally, or anything. I rang the bell, and the door was opened so suddenly that I jumped."
"I wondered at the time how any one could get up from the basement so quickly," Lawrence commented interestedly.