in his presence, but her nights by his side! I do wonder so
many women dare to be married. They would need all to have clean
consciences."

"Or no end of faith in their husbands," said Helen. "If ever I come to
be afraid of you, it will be because I have done something very wrong
indeed."

"Don't be too sure of that, Helen," returned Wingfold. "There are very
decent husbands as husbands go, who are yet unjust, exacting, selfish.
The most devoted of wives are sometimes afraid of the men they yet
consider the very models of husbands. It is a brutal shame that a woman
should feel afraid, or even uneasy, instead of safe, beside her
husband."

"You are always on the side of the women, Thomas," said his wife; "and I
love you for it somehow--I can't tell why."

"You make a mistake to begin with, my dear: you don't love me because I
am on the side of the women, but because I am on the side of the
wronged. If the man happened to be the injured party, and I took the
side of the woman, you would be down on me like an avalanche."

"I dare say. But there is something more in it. I don't think I am
altogether mistaken. You don't talk like most men. They have such an
ugly way of asserting superiority, and sneering at women! That you never
do, and as a woman I am grateful for it."

The same afternoon Dorothy Drake paid a visit to Mrs. Faber, and was
hardly seated before the feeling that something was wrong arose in her.
Plainly Juliet was suffering--from some cause she wished to conceal.
Several times she seemed to turn faint, hurriedly fanned herself, and
drew a deep breath. Once she rose hastily and went to the window, as if
struggling with some oppression, and returned looking very pale.

Dorothy was frightened.

"What is the matter, dear?" she said.

"Nothing," answered Juliet, trying to smile. "Perhaps I took a little
cold last night," she added with a shiver.

"Have you told your husband?" asked Dorothy.

"I haven't seen him since Saturday," she answered quietly, but a pallor
almost deathly overspread her face.

"I hope he will soon be home," said Dorothy. "Mind you tell him how you
feel the instant he comes in."

Juliet answered with a smile, but that smile Dorothy never forgot. It
haunted her all the way home. When she entered her chamber, her eyes
fell upon the petal of a monthly rose, which had dropped from the little
tree in her window, and lay streaked and crumpled on the black earth of
the flower-pot: by o