er apparel, she stole guiltily along by garden
walls and fences until she reached a small, dingy frame-house near
the wharves, in the darkened doorway of which she quenched her burning
splendor, if so bold a figure is permissible.

Three quarters of an hour passed. The sunshine moved slowly up Anchor
Street, fingered noiselessly the well-kept brass knockers on either
side, and drained the heeltaps of dew which had been left from the
revels of the fairies overnight in the cups of the morning-glories.
Not a soul was stirring yet in this part of the town, though the
Rivermouthians are such early birds that not a worm may be said to
escape them. By and by one of the brown Holland shades at one of the
upper windows of the Bilkins mansion--the house from which Miss Margaret
had emerged--was drawn up, and old Mr. Bilkins in spiral nightcap looked
out on the sunny street. Not a living creature was to be seen, save the
dissipated family cat--a very Lovelace of a cat that was not allowed a
night-key--who was sitting on the curbstone opposite, waiting for
the hall door to be opened. Three quarters of an hour, we repeat, had
passed, when Mrs. Margaret O'Rourke, _nee_ Callaghan, issued from the
small, dingy house by the river, and regained the door-step of the
Bilkins mansion in the same stealthy fashion in which she had left it.

Not to prolong a mystery that must already oppress the reader, Mr.
Bilkins's cook had, after the manner of her kind, stolen out of
the premises before the family were up, and got herself
married--surreptitiously and artfully married, as if matrimony were an
indictable offence.

And something of an offence it was in this instance. In the first
place Margaret Callaghan had lived nearly twenty years with the Bilkins
family, and the old people--there were no children now--had rewarded
this long service by taking Margaret into their affections. It was a
piece of subtile ingratitude for her to marry without admitting the
worthy couple to her confidence. In the next place, Margaret had married
a man some eighteen years younger than herself. That was the young man's
lookout, you say. We hold it was Margaret that was to blame. What does
a young blade of twenty-two know? Not half so much as he thinks he does.
His exhaust-less ignorance at that age is a discovery which is left for
him to make in his prime.

"Curly gold locks cover foolish brains,
Billing and cooing is all your cheer;
Sighing