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"Certainly there isn'ton" Anstice was puzzled by her ' here, as the country folks say?"

She put down her cup rather suddenly, and faced him squarely, her blue eyes full of a resolution which added several years to her age

"Dr Anstice" Her deep voice had lost its richness and sounded hard "I should like to tell you sohed rather cynically--"I' to bore you with a rhapsody intended to convey to you that I am a much misunderstood woain, I think I should like you to know just who and what I am"

Mystified, Anstice bowed

"Whatever you tell me I shall be proud to hear--and keep to ht animation and was once more weary, indifferent "Well, first of all, have you ever seenin your face seeht"

"Oh" She did not seem much impressed "Well, to put it differently, have you ever heard of me?"

"No," said Anstice "To the best of my belief I have never heard your name before"

"I see Well, I will tell you who I am, and what I am supposed to have done" No further warhout was cold, alhteen I ood many years older than myself Presently I went out to India with hi home when our child was three years old"

She paused

"I came here--this was my husband's old home--and settled doith Cherry And when I had been in the parish a year or so, there was a scandal in Littlefield"

She stopped, and her mouth quivered into a faint smile

"Oh, I was not the chief character--at first! It was a case in which the Vicar's on an unenviable notoriety It seemed there had been a secret in her life, years before when she was a pretty, silly girl, which was known to very few besides her husband and, I presume, her own people Now you would not think I was a sympathetic person--one in whom a sentimental, rather neurotic woman would confide Would you?"