g if she were that it might be easier to tolerate
her. Juno, who was expected to say the sharpest things, turned upon him
with the exclamation:

"If you can stand those two feather beds, you can do more than I
supposed," and as one means of showing her disapproval, she quitted the
room, while Bell, who had taken to writing articles on the follies of
the age, soon followed her sister to elaborate an idea suggested to her
mind by her brother's contemplated marriage.

Thus left alone with her son, Mrs. Cameron tried all her powers of
persuasion upon him in vain. But nothing she said influenced him in the
least, seeing which she suddenly confronted him with the question:
"Shall you tell her all? A husband should have no secrets of that kind
from his wife."

Wilford's face was white as ashes, and his voice trembled as he replied:
"Yes, mother, I shall tell her all; but, oh! you do not know how hard it
has been for me to bring my mind to that, or how sorry I am that we ever
kept that secret--when Genevra died--"

"Hush-h!" came warningly from the mother as Juno reappeared, the warning
indicating that Genevra, whoever she might be, was a personage never
mentioned, except by mother and son.

As Juno remained the conversation was not resumed, and the next morning
Wilford wrote to Katy Lennox the letter which carried to her so much of
joy, and to Dr. Grant so much of grief. To wait four weeks, as Katy said
he must, was a terrible trial to Wilford, who counted every moment which
kept him from her side. It was all owing to Dr. Grant and that
perpendicular Helen, he knew, for Katy in her letter had admitted that
the waiting was wholly their suggestion; and Wilford's thoughts
concerning them were anything but complimentary, until a new idea was
suggested, which drove every other consideration from his mind.

Wilford was naturally jealous, but that fault had once led him into so
deep a trouble that he had struggled hard to overcome it, and now, at
its first approach, after he thought it dead, he tried to shake it
off--tried not to believe that Morris cared especially for Katy. But
the mere possibility was unendurable, and in a most feverish state of
excitement he started again for Silverton.

As before, Morris was waiting for him at the station, his cordial
greeting and friendly manner disarming him from all anxiety in that
quarter, and making him resolve anew to trample the demon jealousy under
his feet, where it could never