lt that she would not. With my mind shadowed with
vague dread, I left that mysterious stillness, and went back to the
library.

It was not long before Mrs. Langdon was announced. There are some women
to whom a haggard look is becoming; she is one of them. She was much
thinner than when I last saw her; instead of her former restless, petulant,
suspicious expression, she now looked tragically sad. "May I trouble you to
close the door?" said she, when the servant had withdrawn.

I closed the door.

"I've come," she began, without seating herself, "to make you as unhappy, I
fear, as I am. I've hesitated long before coming. But I am desperate. The
one hope I have left is that you and I between us may be able to--to--that
you and I may be able to help each other."

I waited.

"I suppose there are people," she went on, "who have never known what it
was to--really to care for some one else. They would despise me for
clinging to a man after he has shown me that--that his love has ceased."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Langdon," I interrupted. "You apparently think your
husband and I are intimate friends. Before you go any further, I must
disabuse you of that idea."

She looked at me in open astonishment. "You do not know why my husband has
left me?"

"Until a few minutes ago, I did not know that he had left you," I said.
"And I do not wish to know why."

Her expression of astonishment changed to mockery. "Oh!" she sneered. "Your
wife has fooled you into thinking it a one-sided affair. Well, I tell you,
she is as much to blame as he--more. For he did love me when he married me;
did love me until she got him under her spell again."

I thought I understood. "You have been misled, Mrs. Langdon," said I
gently, pitying her as the victim of her insane jealousy. "You have--"

"Ask your wife," she interrupted angrily. "Hereafter, you can't pretend
ignorance. For I'll at least be revenged. She failed utterly to trap him
into marriage when she was a poor girl, and--"

"Before you go any further," said I coldly, "let me set you right. My wife
was at one time engaged to your husband's brother, but--"

"Tom?" she interrupted. And her laugh made me bite my lip. "So she told you
that! I don't see how she dared. Why, everybody knows that she and Mowbray
were engaged, and that he broke it off to marry me."

All in an instant everything that had been confused in my affairs at
home and down town became clear. I understood why I had been pursue