"I felt very wicked, I assure you," smiling faintly. Then, abruptly: "How should you have felt, similarly placed?"
"I?" wonderingly; "mercy! I can't tell."
"Claire, think," in a tone almost of entreaty. "I want to know—I must know."
"You must know? Why, Madeline?"
"Because—because I want to find out what is in you; how strong you are."
Claire looked more and more mystified. "State your case, then," she said, quietly. "I will try and analyze myself."
"Good; now, Claire Keith, suppose that you love some man very much, and you trust him without knowing why, for no other reason than that you love him. When you are happiest, because you have but just parted from your lover—"
Claire started and colored a little.
"When you are thinking of the time, not far away, when you shall not part from him any more—suppose that just then I, a friend whom you have loved, come to you and say: 'This hero of yours is false; he is a two-faced villain; he has deceived you; he is not honorable; he will betray you if he can.' What would you answer me?"
Claire lifted her head proudly. "I would make you take back every word you had uttered, or prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt!"