w I was not feeling very well, either! Basil, how could you?"

"I don't know. The abject creature drove me out of my senses. I suppose
that if I had respected him more, or believed in him more, I should have
had more strength to refuse him. But his limpness seemed to impart
itself to me, and I--I gave way. But really you needn't see him, Isabel.
I can tell him we have talked it over, and I concluded, entirely of
myself, that it was best for you not to meet him, and--"

"He would see through that in an instant. And if he is still the false
creature you think he is, we owe him the truth, more than any other kind
of man. You must understand _that_, Basil!"

"Then you are going to--"

"Don't speak to me, Basil, please," she said, and with an air of high
offence she swept out of the room, and out to the landing of the stairs.
There she hesitated a moment, and put her hand to her hair,
mechanically, to feel if it were in order, and then she went on
downstairs without further faltering. It was I who descended slowly, and
with many misgivings.

IV.

Tedham was sitting in the chair I had shown him when I brought him in,
and in the half-light of one gas-burner in the chandelier he looked,
with his rough, clean clothes, and his slouch hat lying in his lap, like
some sort of decent workingman; his features, refined by the mental
suffering he had undergone, and the pallor of a complexion so seldom
exposed to the open air, gave him the effect of a workingman just out of
the hospital. His eyes were deep in their sockets, and showed fine
shadows in the overhead light, and I must say he looked very
interesting.

At the threshold my wife paused again; then she went forward, turning
the gas up full as she passed under the chandelier, and gave him her
hand, where he had risen from his chair.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Tedham," she said; and I should have found my
astonishment overpowering, I dare say, if I had not felt that I was so
completely in the hands of Providence, when she added, "Won't you come
out to dinner with us? We were just going to sit down, when Mr. March
came in. I never know when he will be back, when he starts off on these
Saturday afternoon tramps of his."

The children seemed considerably mystified at the appearance of our
guest, but they had that superior interest in the dinner appropriate to
their years, and we got through the ordeal, in which, I believe, I
suffered more than any one else, much better t