“Perhaps nothing,” was the reply. “I dare say it is only my Puritanism cropping out. You know we New Englanders find it very difficult to reconcile pleasure with religion. I can fancy the ghost of my great-great-great-grandfather, in sugar-loaf hat and with beruffed neck, standing over there in the shadows, holding his hands aloft in holy horror at the sight of me sitting here on Sunday morning with a volume of love-poems in my hands.”
“What nonsense!” she cried indignantly. “Isn’t love just as holy as—as anything? Isn’t——” She stopped abruptly and Ethan, lifting his head, found her gazing toward him with something almost like horror in her wide eyes.
“What is it?” he cried anxiously.
She shook her head and dropped her gaze to the hands folded on her knees.
“Nothing,” she said very quietly. She laughed softly, uncertainly. “Will you give me my book, please?” she asked.
“Of course,” he answered, still puzzled. Then, as he started to hand it to her, it opened at the fly-leaf and he drew it back. “Laura Frances Devereux,” he read aloud. He smiled quizzically as he returned the volume.
“That proves nothing,” she replied defiantly. “I—I might have borrowed it.”
“True, circumstantial evidence is not absolutely conclusive, unless—unless there is a good deal of it!”
“You may think what you choose,” she answered lightly. She looked at her watch and prepared to rise. This time Ethan was ready. She gave him her hand and he helped her to her feet. The hand drew itself gently but determinedly out of his and he let it go without a struggle.