"I'm not sure," Thorne answered moodily. "Plodding along the lauded beaten track now and then palls on one, and it isn't the least bit easier than the other. Anyway, I only did what I had to; Lucy said she had counted on me."
This last confession, which he seemed to make in a moment of forgetfulness, stirred Alison to a sense of irritation that astonished her a little.
"Were you compelled to help a defaulting debtor escape?" she demanded. "I understand that is what Winthrop is."
"If you knew the whole story you would hardly call him that," Thorne retorted with an indignant sparkle in his eyes.
"But he borrowed money on his cattle, among other things, didn't he, and then sold them, and ran away when the man who lent it to him wanted it back?"
"He did," Thorne assented with some dryness. "I'm sorry I must confess it, because a baldly correct statement of the kind you have just made which leaves out all extenuating details is often a most misleading thing."
"How can a statement of fact be misleading?"
Farquhar smiled and Thorne made a grimace.
"The aspect of any fact varies with one's point of view. You evidently can't get away from the conventional one."
Alison was growing angry, though subsequent reflection convinced her that this was not due to his last observation. She had sympathized with his attitude when he had in the first instance mentioned his dislike of Nevis; and his willingness to side with the injured against the oppressor had certainly pleased her. In the abstract, it appeared wholly commendable; but, in particular, that it should have led him to take up the cause of a girl against whom for no very clear reason she felt prejudiced was a different thing.