"Yes, certainly," Wilford rejoined, while at his heart there was the
germ of a feeling which, if in the slightest degree encouraged, would
almost have given Katy's life to save his darling self-love and honor in
the eyes of the world.

Few men are as thoroughly selfish as Wilford Cameron, and though he was
very much concerned for Katy, he thought more of preserving a secret
which, if known at this late day, would subject him to much censure and
reproach, than he did of her. So when his mother told him next that
Helen had been sent for, his morbid fears took alarm.

"Why was it necessary to bring another here?" he asked, so indignantly
that tears sprang to his mother's eyes as she pleaded her own weariness
and inability to remain always in the sickroom, and charged him with
ingratitude for all she had done in his behalf.

Wilford could not afford to quarrel with his mother, and he quieted her
as soon as possible, admitting that if she must have an assistant he
would rather it were Helen than Bell or Juno, or even Esther, who, in
spite of the alarm about malignant fever, would willingly have
administered to her young mistress, had she been allowed to do so.

"You will go up now," Mrs. Cameron said to her son, when peace was fully
restored, and a moment after Wilford stood in the dimly-lighted room,
where Katy was talking of going to the hospitals, and of Marian
Hazelton, and was only kept upon her pillow by the strong arm of Morris,
who stood over her when Wilford entered, telling her to "wait until
to-morrow--it would be better then, and she had not seen her husband
yet."

"I have no husband," she replied, her lip curling with scorn, and her
eyes just then falling upon Wilford, who stood appalled at the fearful
change which had passed over her since he left her three days before.

She knew him, and writhing herself away from Morris' arms, she raised up
in bed and said to him:

"I've been at the bottom of things, and Genevra is not in that grave at
St. Mary's. Nobody is there; consequently, she is living, and you are
not my husband. So if you please you can leave the house at once. Morris
will do very well. He will settle the estate, and no bill shall be sent
in for your board and lodging."

In some moods Wilford would have smiled at being thus summarily
dismissed from his own house and assured that no bill should be sent
after him for board and lodging; but he was too sore now, too sensitive
to smile, and his