truly, when that night he bent over his
sleeping Katy, comparing her face with Genevra's, and his love for her
with his love for Genevra.

"That was a boyish fancy, this love of mature years," and Wilford
pressed a kiss upon Katy's pure forehead, showing so white in the
moonlight.

Wilford was very fond of his girlish wife and very proud of her, too,
when strangers paused, as they often did, to look back after her. Thus
far nothing had arisen to mar the happiness of his first weeks of
married life; nothing except the letters from Silverton, over which Katy
always cried, until he sometimes wished that the family could not write.
But they could and they did; even Aunt Betsy inclosed in Helen's letter
a note, wonderful both in orthography and composition, and concluding
with the remark that she would be glad when Catherine returned and was
settled in a home of her own, as she would then have a new place to
visit.

There was a dark frown on Wilford's face, and for a moment he felt
tempted to withhold the note from Katy, but this he could not do then,
so he gave it into her hands, watching her as with burning cheeks, she
read it through, and asking her at its close why she looked so red.

"Oh, Wilford," and she crept closely to him, "Aunt Betsy spells so
queerly, that I was wishing you would not always open my letters first.
Do all husbands do so?"

It was the only time Katy had ventured to question a single act of his,
submitting without a word to whatever was his will. Wilford knew that
his father would never have presumed to break a seal belonging to his
mother, but he had broken Katy's and he should continue breaking them,
so he answered, laughingly;

"Why, yes, I guess they do. My little wife has surely no secrets to hide
from me?"

"No secrets," Katy answered, "only I did not want you to see Aunt
Betsy's letter, that's all."

"I did not marry Aunt Betsy--I married you," was Wilford's reply; which
meant far more than Katy guessed.

With three thousand miles between him and his wife's relatives, Wilford
could endure to think of them; but whenever letters came to Katy bearing
the Silverton postmark, he was conscious of a far different sensation
from what he experienced when the postmark was New York and the
handwriting that of his own family. But not in any way did this feeling
manifest itself to Katy, who, as she always wrote to Helen, was very,
very happy, and never more so, perhaps, than while they were at