t asked:

"Whom do you wish to see the most?"

His black eyes seemed reading her through, and something in their
expression brought to her face the blush which he construed according to
his jealousy, and when she answered:

"I wish to see them all," he retorted:

"Say, rather, you wish to see that doctor, who has loved you so long,
and who but for me would have asked you to be his wife!"

"What doctor, Wilford? Whom do you mean?" and Wilford replied:

"Dr. Grant, of course. Did you never suspect it?"

"Never," and Katy's face grew very white, as she asked how Wilford knew
what he had asserted.

"I had it from his own lips; he sitting on one side of you and I upon
the other. I so far forgot myself as to charge him with loving you, and
he did not deny it, but confessed as pretty a piece of romance as I ever
read, except that, according to his story, it was a one-sided affair,
confined wholly to himself. You never dreamed of it, he said."

"Never, no, never," Katy said, panting for her breath, and remembering
suddenly many things which confirmed what she had heard.

"Poor Morris, how my thoughtlessness must have wounded him," she
murmured, and then all the pent up passion in Wilford's heart burst out
in an impetuous storm.

He did not charge his wife directly with returning Morris' love, but he
said he was sorry she had not known it earlier; asking her pointedly if
it were not so, and pressing her for an answer until the bewildered
creature cried out:

"Oh, I don't know. I never thought of it before."

"But you can think of it now," Wilford continued, his cold, icy tone
making Katy shiver, as more to herself than him she said:

"A life at Linwood would be perfect rest, compared to this."

Wilford had wrung from her all he cared to know, and believing himself
the most injured man in existence, he left the house, and Katy heard his
step as it went furiously down the walk. For a time she seemed stunned
with what she had heard, and then there came stealing into her heart a
glad feeling that Morris deemed her worthy of his love when she had so
often feared the contrary. It was not a wicked emotion, nor one
faithless to Wilford. She could pray with just as pure a heart as
before, and she did pray, thanking God for the love of this good man,
and asking that long ere this he might have learned to be content
without her. Never once did the thought "It might have been," intrude
itself upon her, nor did she picture