"Please do. I hate to misunderstand people."

"Well, I'll try and explain. You have not forgotten, I hope, that I have already described you as an angel?"

"Your quotation wasn't a bit more applicable than mine."

"Be that as it may, I cannot imagine an angel married. Can you?"

"Good gracious! Am I to remain single all my life?"

"Who am I that I should choose between an angel and Meg Ogilvey?"

"I wouldn't limit your choice so narrowly," she said, eluding his point with ease. "Besides, I've been expecting every minute to hear that there is a Mrs. Armathwaite."

"There isn't!"

"I'm sorry. I wish there was, and that she was here now. Then, if she was nice, and you wouldn't have married her if she wasn't, she would ask me to stay a few days. And I would say 'Yes, please.' As it is, I must hurry over my packing, and take myself back to Cheshire."

"Yes," said he, compelling the words. "There is no doubt about that. You cannot remain here."

"Well, you needn't hammer in the fact that you'll be glad to be rid of me. Have some more coffee?"

A heavy step sounded on the path without. The girl, who was seated with her back to the window, turned and looked out.

"Here's Tom Bland, the Nuttonby carrier," she cried excitedly, smiling and nodding at some person visible only to herself. "Dear old Tom! Won't he be surprised at seeing me!"

Armathwaite's wandering wits were suddenly and sharply recalled to the extraordinary situation confronting him.

"You don't mean that some local man has recognized you?" he growled, and the note of real annoyance in his voice brought a wondering glance from the girl.

"We gazed straight at one another, at any rate," she said, with a perceptible stiffening of manner. "Considering that Tom knows me as well as I know him, it would be stupid to pretend that neither of us knows the other. It would be useless where Tom is concerned, at any rate. He grinned all over his face, so I may as well go to the door and have a 

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