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 knows what the suppression of that smile saved him from—noror [sic] what it brought him to.

“I’m glad,” she said, “that I had the courage to send for you—and the good judgment…. It required resolution, you know—because—well, because nobody who ought to have done it did it.”

Angus nodded.

“After I’d done it,” she went on, “I was sort of worried. About the wisdom of it, you know…. Because when I saw you last—you—well, to tell the truth, you weren’t the kind of person one expects a great deal from, you know.”

Angus shrank back in his chair, and Lydia, seeing how her words hurt and troubled him, was so sorry that she hastened to make matters right. “But,” she said hurriedly, “as soon as I saw you, I knew it was all right.”

Then Lydia came to the real object of her lying in ambush for Angus—came to it before she was quite ready, for she found the boy more difficult than she had imagined, almost, if not quite incomprehensible to her. He almost nonplussed her. At any rate he made her pause and reflect…. He was so quiet and so—so strange.

“People are talking about you,” she said.

He nodded dumbly.

“It—it isn’t fair,” she said and paused. “Do you remember when you fought Malcolm Crane?”