When I turned about to go into my car, I found Madge standing on the platform of 218 waving a handkerchief.  I paid no attention to her, and started up my steps.

“Mr. Gordon,” she said—­and when I looked at her I saw that she was flushing—­“what is the matter?”

I suppose most fellows would have found some excuse, but for the life of me I couldn’t.  All I was able to say was—­

“I would rather not say, Miss Cullen.”

“How unfair you are!” she cried.  “You—­without the slightest reason you suddenly go out of your way to ill-treat—­insult me, and yet will not tell me the cause.”

That made me angry.  “Cause?” I cried.  “As if you didn’t know of a cause!  What you don’t know is that I overheard your conversation with Lord Ralles night before last.”

“My conversation with Lord Ralles?” exclaimed Madge, in a bewildered way.

“Yes,” I said bitterly, “keep up the acting.  The practice is good, even if it deceives no one.”

“I don’t understand a word you are saying,” she retorted, getting angry in turn.  “You speak as if I had done wrong—­as if—­I don’t know what; and I have a right to know to what you allude.”

“I don’t see how I can be any clearer,” I muttered.  “I was under the station platform, hiding from the cowboys, while you and Lord Ralles were walking.  I didn’t want to be a listener, but I heard a good deal of what you said.”

“But I didn’t walk with Lord Ralles,” she cried, “The only person I walked with was Captain Ackland.”

That took me very much aback, for I had never questioned in my mind that it wasn’t Lord Ralles.  Yet the moment she spoke, I realized how much alike the two brothers’ voices were, and how easily the blurring of distance and planking might have misled me.  For a moment I was speechless.  Then I replied coldly—­

“It makes no difference with whom you were.  What you said was the essential part.”

“But how could you for an instant suppose that I could say what I did to Lord Ralles?” she demanded.

“I naturally thought he would be the one to whom you would appeal concerning my ‘insulting’ conduct.”

Madge looked at me for a moment as if transfixed.  Then she laughed, and cried—­

“Oh, you idiot!”

While I still looked at her in equal amazement, she went on, “I beg your pardon, but you are so ridiculous that I had to say it.  Why, I wasn’t talking about you, but about Lord Ralles.”

“Lord Ralles!” I cried.

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand,” I exclaimed.

“Why, Lord Ralles has been—­has been—­oh, he’s threatened that if I wouldn’t—­that—­”

“You mean he—?” I began, and then stopped, for I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Oh,” she burst out, “of course you couldn’t understand, and you probably despise me already, but if you knew how I scorn myself, Mr. Gordon, and what I have endured from that man, you would only pity me.”