is," Katy cried, throwing back her veil and revealing a
face which Morris could not believe was hers for the lines of suffering
and distress stamped so legibly upon it.

But it was Katy, as the voice implied, and, seizing her cold hands,
Morris asked: "Katy, why are you here to-night, and why are you alone?
Has anything happened? Tell me! your looks frighten me!"

"I am so wretched--so full of pain. I have heard of something dreadful,"
she replied--"something which took my life away. I could not stay there
after that, and so I come to you. I am not Wilford's wife, for he had
another, before me--a wife in Italy--who is not dead! And I--oh! Morris,
what am I? Untie my bonnet, do! It is choking me to death! I am--yes--I
am--going--to faint!"

It was the first time Katy had put the great horror in words addressed
to another, and the act of doing so made it more appalling, while the
excitement and fatigue she had endured, together with the action of the
heat upon her chilled system, took her strength away, and into the chair
where Morris had so often seen her in fancy, she sank a crumpled heap of
cloaks and furs and bonnet, which Morris tried to remove so as to reach
the limp, fainting creature which had said: "I am not Wilford's wife,
for he had another before me--a wife in Italy--who is not dead."

Dr. Morris was thoroughly a man, and though much of his sinful nature
had been subdued, there was enough left to make his heart rise and fall
with great throbs of joy as he thought of Katy free, even though that
freedom were bought at the expense of dire disgrace to others and of
misery to her. But only for a moment did he feel thus, only till the
bonnet was removed and the gaslight fell upon the pallid face with the
dark rings beneath the eyes, and the faint, quivering motion around the
lips, which told that she was not wholly unconscious.

"My poor little wounded bird," he said, as pityingly as if he had been
her father, while, much as a father might kiss his suffering child, he
kissed the forehead and the eyelids where the tears began to gather.

Katy was not insensible, and the name by which he called her, with the
kisses that he gave, thawed the ice around her heart and brought a flood
of tears which Morris wiped away, removing her heavy fur and lifting her
gently up, while he took away the cloak and left her unencumbered. With
a sigh she sank back into the chair, and, leaning her head upon its
cushioned arm, moaned li