"
She glanced at him in surprise. His face was pale and disordered; he
was twisting his fingers as if he would break them.
"Your temper seems to be on the move, Mr. Sleeny. We'd better go home,"
she said quietly, drawing her shawl about her.
"Don't go till I tell you something," he stammered hastily.
"I have no curiosity to hear what you have to say," she said, rising
from her seat.
"It ain't what you think--it ain't about me!"
Her curiosity awoke, and she sat down again. Sleeny sat twisting his
fingers, growing pale and red by turns. At last, in a tremulous voice,
he said:
"_I_ was there to-day."
She stared at him an instant and said:
"Where?"
"Oh, I was there, and I seen you. I was at work at the end of the
greenhouse there by the gate when you come out of the rose-house. I was
watchin' for you. I was on the lawn talkin' with the gardener when you
went in the house. About an hour afterward I seen you comin' down the
garden with him to the rose-house. If you had stayed there a minute
more, I would ha' went in there. But out you come with your hands full
o' roses, and him and you come to the gate.
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