"She has not any further suspicion, then?"
"None, I am sure," he answered, confidently. "It is you whom she believes to be shielding the man. She has a strong idea that he is a friend of yours; strangely enough she seems to have taken a violent dislike to you too. I believe that the very fact of that dislike blinds her a little."
"I agree with you as to the dislike. But why strangely?"
His firm lips parted a little. He looked at me with a smile.
"You do not appear to me," he said, slowly, "to be a person to be disliked."
I made a mental registration of that remark. It was the nearest approach to a compliment he had ever paid me.
"I am infinitely obliged," I said. "At the same time I think I can understand her dislike."
"You women are so quick at understanding one another," he remarked.
"And men are so slow," I replied. "Do you know I have an idea that if she were to come here now she would dislike me even more."
He looked at me without embarrassment, with a genuine desire for information in his face. He was evidently puzzled.
I laughed outright, and it did me good. He joined in it without the least idea of what I was laughing at.
"You men are so stupid!" I exclaimed. "You either will not or cannot see things which are as simple as A B C."
"I admit it," he answered, good humoredly. "But must you go in?"
I nodded. We had made a little circuit, and had reached the road again within a few yards of our gate.
"Yes, I am going to make something for my father. He is really ill, you know."
"Why don't you let your sister do it?" he said. "She looks a great deal more used to that sort of thing than you do."
"Thanks," I answered. "At the same time you are quite wrong. It is I who am the domestic one of the family."
"You don't give one that idea at all," he said, forcibly.
"Well, you shall see," I told him. "Some day we will ask you to luncheon and cook it between us. I know whose productions you will prefer."
"I beg your pardon. I did not mean to be. As a rule I detest women almost as much as they detest me. I do not think that your sister would interest me."
"She does a great deal of good," I said. "She is managing the whole parish while my father is ill."
"I have no doubt she is very useful in her way," he answered, indifferently.