, and my name and position."

"Judge Colton!" cried Adam, stepping nearer and looking the Judge
square in the eyes--all the forces of his soul were up in arms
now--"your criticisms and your words are an insult! Your wife is as
unconscious as a child of any wrong-doing, and so am I. I found the
dress in the trunk and made her put it on. Mrs. Colton has been as
safe here with me as if she had been my sister, and she has been my
sister every hour of the day, and I love her dearly. I have told her
so, and I tell you so!"

The Judge was accustomed to read the souls of men, and he saw that
this one was without a stain.

"I believe you, Gregg," he said, extending his hand. "I have been
hasty and have done you a wrong. Forgive me! And you, too, Olivia. I
am over-sensitive about these things: perhaps, too, I am a little
tired. We will say no more about it."

* * * * *

That night when the Judge had shut himself up in his study with his
work, and Olivia had gone to her room, Adam mounted the stairs and
flung himself down on one of the old sofas. The garret was dark,
except where the light of the waning moon filtering through the sheet,
fell upon the portrait and patterned the floor in squares of silver.
Olivia's eyes still shone out from the easel. In the softened,
half-ghostly light there seemed to struggle out from their depths a
certain pleading look, as if she needed help and was appealing to him
for sympathy. He knew it was only a trick the moonlight was playing
with his colors--lowering the reds and graying the flesh tones--that
when the morning came all the old joyousness would return; but it
depressed him all the same.

The Judge's words with their cruelty and injustice still rankled in
his heart. The quixotic protest, he knew, about his mother's faded old
satin must have had some other basis than the one of immodesty--an
absurd position, as any one could see who would examine the picture.
Olivia could never be anything but modest. Had it really been the gown
that had offended him? or had he seen something in his wife's portrait
which he had missed before in her face--something of the joy which a
freer and more untrammelled life had given her, and which had,
therefore, aroused his jealousy. He would never forgive him for the
outburst, despite the apology, nor would he ever forget Olivia
cowering, when she listened, as if from a blow, hugging little Phil to
her side. While the Judge's