"What does he say?" she asked.
"What can he say?" Thad's fiancée broke out nervously, "except that it ain't so. But that doesn't shut people's mouths. Nobody can do that but you. I think"—she raised her chin virtuously and twisted her gloves tight in her trembling hands—"that you ought to come out plain and tell who the man is—I mean the—you know what I mean!"
"Yes," said Lib dully, "I know what you mean."
There was a little silence, broken only by the mad twitter of nesting linnets in the passion-vine overhead.
"Of course," resumed the stranger, "I wouldn't want you to think but what I'm sorry for you. You've been treated awful mean by somebody."
A surprised look grew in the eyes Lib fixed upon her visitor. The baby stirred in its sleep, and she bent down and rubbed her cheek against its hair.
"You needn't waste any time being sorry for me," she said.
"It's too bad," continued Miss Adair, intent upon her own exalted charity, "but that doesn't make it right for you to get other folks into trouble. You'd ought to remember that."
"If you think he's all right, why don't you go ahead and marry him?" asked Lib.
"My folks would make such a fuss, and besides I don't know as it would be just right for me to act like I didn't care, after all that's been said—and me a church-member!"