ing the broad river and the blue mountains beyond. Wilford was
with her; he had come out to spend the night, returning to the city in
the morning. Now that he had accomplished his purpose he was in the best
of spirits, treating Katy with unwonted kindness and wondering why he
hated so to leave her, while she, too, clung to him, wishing he could
stay. Their parting was only for two days, for this was Thursday, and he
was to return on Saturday, but in the hearts of both there was that dark
foreboding which is so often a sure precursor of evil. Twice Wilford
turned back to kiss his wife, feeling tempted once to tell her he was
sorry for his jealousy and distrust, but such confession was hard for
him and so he left it unsaid, looking back to the window against which
Katy's face was pressed as she watched him going from her, but little
guessing what would be ere she looked on him again.

* * * * *

Tom Tubbs sat reading Chitty as usual when Mr. Cameron came in from his
trip up the river. Since Katy's last call at the office Tom had been
haunted with her face as it looked when Wilford's cold greeting fell on
her ear, and after a private conference with Mattie, who listened
eagerly to every item of information with regard to Katy, he had come to
the conclusion that his employer was a brute, and that his wife was not
as happy as it was his duty to make her.

"It's mean in him to speak so hateful to her," he was thinking just as
Wilford came in, appearing so very amiable and good-humored that the boy
ventured to inquire for Mrs. Cameron. "She looked so pale and sick, the
other day," he said, "almost as bad in fact as she did that night in the
cars with Dr. Grant, just before she was so dangerously ill."

"What's that? What did you say?" Wilford asked quickly, and Tom,
thinking he had not been understood, repeated his words, while in a
voice which Tom scarcely knew, it was so low and husky, Wilford asked:
"What night was Mrs. Cameron in the cars with Dr. Grant? When was it,
and where?"

As suspicion is an intense magnifier, so the absence of it will blind
one completely, and Tom was thus blindfolded as he stated in detail how
two months or more ago, while Mr. Cameron was absent, he had been sent
by Mr. Ray to Hartford, returning in the early train, that just before
him, in the car, a gentleman sat with a lady who seemed to be sick, at
all events her head lay on his shoulder and he occasionally b