art; not that I was playing him false, for
I was risking life, love and the loss of everything I prized, to save
him from himself; but that his love for me should be so strong he could
forget the two tortured hearts above, in the admiration I had awakened
in the shallow people about us. But I smiled, as a woman on the rack
might smile if the safety of her loved ones depended on her courage,
and, nerving myself for the suspense of such a waiting as few of my
inexperience have ever been called upon to endure, I turned to a group
of ladies I saw near me and began to talk.

Happily, I did not have to chatter long; happily, Mrs. Ransome was quick
in her movements and exact in all she did, and, sooner than I expected,
sooner perhaps, than I was prepared for it, the man who attended the
front door came to my side and informed me that a lady wished to see
me--a lady who had just arrived from the steamer, and who said she was
the mistress of the house, Mrs. Ransome.

Mrs. Ransome! The name spread like wild-fire, but before any movement
was made, I had bounded, in laughing confusion, to my husband's side,
and, grasping him merrily by the arm, cried:

"Your expectations have come true. Mrs. Ransome has returned without
warning, and to-night she will partake of the supper you have always had
served for her."

The shock was as great, perhaps, as ever man received. I knew what it
was likely to be, and held him upright, with the seeming merriment in my
eyes which I did not allow to stray from his. He thought I was mad, then
he thought he was--then I recalled him to the dangers and exigencies of
the moment by saying, with forced naivete:

"Shall I go and welcome her to this gathering in her own house, or will
you do the honors? She may not know me."

He moved, but as a statue might move, shot through and through with an
electric spark. I saw that I must act, rather than he, so uttering some
girlish sentence about the mice and cat, I glided away into the hall,
where Mrs. Ransome stood in the nondescript black coat and bonnet I had
provided her from her own wardrobe. She had slipped a few moments before
from the house with her daughter, whom she had placed in a carriage,
which I had ordered to wait for them directly in front of the lamp-post,
and had now re-entered as the mistress returning unexpectedly after a
departure of five years. All had been done as I had planned, and it
only remained to carry on the farce and prevent its de