But even that didn't work; they had their suspicions excited already." "Did Miss Dows give that as a reason for declining your suit ?" asked Courtland slowly.
"Yes.

You know what a straightforward girl she is.

She didn't come no rot about 'not expecting anything of the kind,' or about 'being a sister to me,' and all that, for, by Jove! she's always more like a fellow's sister, don't you know, than his girl.

Of course, it was hard lines for me, but I suppose she was about right." He stopped, and then added with a kind of gentle persistency: "YOU think she was about right, don't you ?" With what was passing in Courtland's mind the question seemed so bitterly ironical that at first he leaned half angrily forward, in an unconscious attempt to catch the speaker's expression in the darkness.
"I should hardly venture to give an opinion," he said, after a pause.
"Miss Dows' relations with her neighbors are so very peculiar.

And from what you tell me of her cousin it would seem that her desire to placate them is not always to be depended upon." "I'm not finding fault with HER, you know," said Champney hastily.