Before many seconds were over, however, they had walked round the building, and I heard Lord Ralles say—­

“You really don’t mean that he’s insulted you?”

“That is just what I do mean,” cried Madge, indignantly.  “It’s been almost past endurance.  I haven’t dared to tell any one, but he had the cruelty, the meanness, on Hance’s trail to threaten that—­”

At that point the walkers turned the corner again, and I could not hear the rest of the sentence.  But I had heard more than enough to make me grow hot with mortification, even while I could hardly believe I had understood aright.  Madge had been so kind to me lately that I couldn’t think she had been feeling as bitterly as she spoke.  That such an apparently frank girl was a consummate actress wasn’t to be thought, and yet—­I remembered how well she had played her part on Hance’s trail; but even that wouldn’t convince me.  Proof of her duplicity came quickly enough, for, while I was still thinking, the walkers were round again, and Lord Ralles was saying—­

“Why haven’t you complained to your father or brothers?”

“Because I knew they would resent his conduct to me, and—­”

“Of course they would,” cried her companion, interrupting.  “But why should you object to that?”

“Because of the letters,” explained Madge.  “Don’t you see that if we made him angry he would betray us to Mr. Camp, and—­”

Then they passed out of hearing, leaving me almost desperate, both at being an eavesdropper to such a conversation, and that Madge could think so meanly of me.  To say it, too, to Lord Ralles made it cut all the deeper, as any fellow who had been in love will understand.

Round they came again in a moment, and I braced myself for the lash of the whip that I felt was coming.  I didn’t escape it, for Madge was saying—­

“Can you conceive of a man pretending to care for a girl and yet treating her so?  I can’t tell you the grief, the mortification, I have endured.”  She spoke with a half-sob in her throat, as if she was struggling not to cry, which made me wish I had never been born.  “It’s been all I could do to control myself in his presence, I have come so utterly to hate and despise him,” she added.

“I don’t wonder,” growled Lord Ralles.  “My only surprise is—­”

With that they passed out of hearing again, leaving me fairly desperate with shame, grief, and, I’m afraid, with anger.

I felt at once guilty and yet wronged.  I knew my conduct on the trail must have seemed to her ungentlemanly because I had never dared to explain that my action there had been a pure bluff, and that I wouldn’t have really searched her for—­well, for anything; but though she might think badly of me for that, yet I had done my best to counter-balance it, and was running big risks, both present and eventual, for Madge’s sake.  Yet here she was acknowledging that thus far she had used me as a puppet, while all the time disliking me.  It was a terrible blow, made all the harder by the fact that she was proving herself such a different girl from the one I loved—­so different, in fact, that, despite what I had heard, I couldn’t quite believe it of her, and found myself seeking to extenuate and even justify her conduct.  While I was doing this, they came within hearing, and Lord Ralles was speaking.