a few minutes she heard her
carriage go clattering up the street; but she sat still and tearless
in the little low chair which stood by the nursery fire. Her boy was
taking a drive with his nurse, and she was quite alone in the room
sacred to his innocent life. She kept the anger in her heart behind
her closed lips, but she reflected that patience might cease to be a
virtue; and that the time had come to demand from Harry some
explanation of the rumors and accusations that had reached her.

"Mr. Van Hoosen is here, ma'am, and wishes to see you," said a
servant.

Adriana thought of her brother with a sense of comfort. She felt that
she could open her heart to him. But it was not Antony, it was
Antony's father who came towards her with outstretched hands, and a
blessing that fell like rain upon her hot heart.

"God has sent you, father," she said solemnly; "for I am in a strait,
in such a strait as no one but you can help me out of." Then she told
him all her sorrow; and it was evident to Peter that the sting of her
grief was her husband's frailty. "If Harry were only good!" she cried
despairingly. "I could bear the loss of his love."

"But, Yanna, my dearest one! what man is good? Was any one ever exempt
from sin but the Son of the Virgin?"

"Oh, father!" she cried passionately, "will you be like the rest of
the world, and take a man's view of this question, just because you
are a man?"

"My dear one, neither must you take a woman's view just because you
are a woman. The common law and the social law may regard sex; the
commands of God are issued to man and woman alike; though our merciful
Creator, no doubt, will judge us according to our circumstances and
our temptations."

"If Harry wrongs me, or I wrong Harry, the sin is the same against
God."

"It is. But it is not the same against each other. Harry could never
wrong you as you could wrong Harry."

"Oh, father! How can you say such a thing?"

"Think a moment. The infidelity of a husband injures a wife's good
name far less than the infidelity of a wife injures her husband's good
name. In one case the wife is only visited by the pity of her
acquaintances, in the other case the husband is an object of derision;
yes; in every age the world has thought the deceived husband worthy to
be derided and sneered at. Socially then your sin would hurt Harry
worse than his sin could hurt you. Between a man and his Maker, and a
woman and her Maker, the cases are to ju