n a desperate fright? All your secrets displayed like
a story, as you are so fond of saying--what's the name of it--where the
husband, no, it was the wife, fainted away, and broke open the desk with
her head.'

'My dear Arthur!' and Violet laughed so much that nurse in the next room
foreboded that he would tire her.

'I vow it was so! Out came a whole lot of letters from the old love, a
colonel in the Peninsula, that her husband had never heard of,--an old
lawyer he was.'

'The husband? What made her marry him?'

'They were all ruined horse and foot, and the old love was wounded,
"kilt", or disposed of, till he turned up, married to her best friend.'

'What became of her?'

'I forget--there was a poisoning and a paralytic stroke in it.'

'Was there! How delightful! How I should like to read it. What was its
name?'

'I don't remember. It was a green railway book. Theodora made me read
it, and I should know it again if I saw it. I'll look out for it, and
you'll find I was right about her head. But how now. Haven't you fainted
away all this time?'

'No; why should I?'

'How do you know what I may have discovered in your papers? Are you
prepared? It is no laughing matter,' added he, in a Blue Beard tone,
and drawing out the paper of calculations, he pointed to the tear marks.
'Look here. What's this, I say, what's this, you naughty child?'

'I am sorry! it was very silly,' whispered Violet, in a contrite ashamed
way, shrinking back a little.

'What business had you to break your heart over these trumpery butchers
and bakers and candlestick makers?'

'Only candles, dear Arthur,' said Violet, meekly, as if in extenuation.

'But what on earth could you find to cry about?'

'It was very foolish! but I was in such a dreadful puzzle. I could not
make the cook's accounts and mine agree, and I wanted to be sure whether
she really--'

'Cheated!' exclaimed Arthur. 'Well, that's a blessing!'

'What is?' asked the astonished Violet.

'That I have cleared the house of that intolerable woman!'

'The cook gone!' cried Violet, starting, so that her papers slid away,
and Arthur shuffled them up in his hand in renewed confusion. 'The cook
really gone? Oh! I am so glad!'

'Capital!' cried Arthur. 'There was John declaring you would be in
despair to find your precious treasure gone.'

'Oh! I never was more glad! Do tell me! Why did she go?'

'I had a skrimmage with her about some trout Fitzhugh sent, which I
verily