perhaps?«
    Looking up, she read my face with a quick, deep glance. »Yes,« she said, »I
think I may tell you - some time;« and so our conversation ended, for she gave
me no chance to say anything more.
    That night I don't think even Dr. Pillsbury could have put me to sleep, till
toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my accustomed food for days now, but
none had before confronted me at once so mysterious and so fascinating as this,
the solution of which Edith Leete had forbidden me even to seek. It was a double
mystery. How, in the first place, was it conceivable that she should know any
secret about me, a stranger from a strange age? In the second place, even if she
should know such a secret, how account for the agitating effect which the
knowledge of it seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles so difficult that one
cannot even get so far as a conjecture as to the solution, and this seemed one
of them. I am usually of too practical a turn to waste time on such conundrums;
but the difficulty of a riddle embodied in a beautiful young girl does not
detract from its fascination. In general, no doubt, maidens' blushes may be
safely assumed to tell the same tale to young men in all ages and races, but to
give that interpretation to Edith's crimson checks would, considering my
position and the length of time I had known her, and still more the fact that
this mystery dated from before I had known her at all, be a piece of utter
fatuity. And yet she was an angel, and I should not have been a young man if
reason and common sense had been able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my
dreams that night.
 

                                  Chapter XXIV

In the morning I went down stairs early in the hope of seeing Edith alone. In
this, however, I was disappointed. Not finding her in the house, I sought her in
the garden, but she was not there. In the course of my wanderings I visited the
underground chamber, and sat down there to rest. Upon the reading table in the
chamber several periodicals and newspapers lay, and thinking that Dr. Leete
might be interested in glancing over a Boston daily of 1887, I brought one of
the papers with me into the house when I came.
    At breakfast I met Edith. She blushed as she greeted me, but was perfectly
self-possessed. As we sat at table, Dr. Leete amused himself with looking over