But Zara seemed determined to keep the cause of her woe to herself.  Not all of Bessie’s pleading could make her answer the simplest questions.  Finally, seeming to feel a little better, she managed to speak more coherently.

“Leave me alone for a little while, please, Bessie,” she begged.  “I’ll be all right then—­really I will!”

So Bessie, reluctantly enough, had to go downstairs, since she understood thoroughly that to keep on pressing Zara for an explanation while she was in such a nervous state would do more harm than good.

“Could you find out what was wrong?” asked Eleanor anxiously when Bessie came down.  Charlie Jamieson was still with her on the porch, smoking a cigar and frowning as if he were thinking of something very unpleasant.  He was, as a matter of fact.  He was changing all his ideas of the case in which Eleanor’s encounter with the two girls had involved him, since, with Brack for an opponent, he knew only too well that he was in for a hard fight, and if, as he supposed, the opposition was entirely without a reasonable case, a fight in which dirty and unfair methods were sure to be employed.

Bessie shook her head.

“She wouldn’t tell me anything—­just begged me to leave her alone and said she’d be all right presently,” she answered.  “I’ve seen her this way before and, really, there’s nothing to do but wait until she feels better.”

“You’ve seen her this way before, you say?” said Jamieson, quickly.  “What was the matter then?  What made her act so?  If we know why she did it before, perhaps it will give us a clue to why she is behaving in such a queer fashion now.”

Bessie hesitated.

“She’s awfully sensitive,” she said.  “Sometimes, when people have just joked with her a little bit, without meaning to say anything nasty at all, she’s thought they were angry at her, or laughing at her for being a foreigner, and she’s gone off just like this.  I thought at first—­”

“Yes?” said Eleanor, encouragingly, when Bessie stopped.  “Don’t be afraid to tell us what you think, Bessie.  We just want to get to the bottom of this strange fit of hers, you know.”

“Well, it seems awfully mean to say it,” said poor Bessie, “when you’ve been so lovely to us, but I thought maybe someone had joked about her in some way.  You know she sometimes pronounces words in a funny fashion, as if she’d only read them, and had never heard anyone speak them.  In Hedgeville lots of people used to laugh at her for that.  I think that’s why she stopped going to school.  And I thought, perhaps, that was what was the matter—­”

“It might have happened, of course,” said Eleanor, “and without anyone meaning to hurt her feelings.  I’d be very careful myself, but some of the other people around the house wouldn’t know, of course.  But, no, that won’t explain it, Bessie.  Not this time.”

“Are you sure, Eleanor!” asked Jamieson.