him and wear that look? The question staggered
Wilford for a moment, but when he remembered the proof, he steeled his
heart against her and prepared to act.

CHAPTER XLII.

DISAPPEARED.

All the next day Wilford was very busy arranging his affairs, and a
casual looker-on would have seen nothing unusual in the face always so
grave and cold. But to Tom Tubbs, casting furtive glances over his book
and wondering at his employer's sudden activity, it was terrible in its
dark, hard, unrelenting expression, while even his mother, upon whom he
called that evening, looked at him anxiously, asking what was the
matter, but not mentioning the conversation held with her the previous
day respecting Katy.

She was still at Yonkers, Wilford said, and his voice was very natural
as he added: "I am expected to go out there to-morrow night with
Beverley and Lincoln, whose wives are also at Mrs. Mills'; quite a gay
party we shall make," and he tried to smile, but it was a sickly effort
and made his face look still more ghastly and strange.

"What ails you, Wilford?" his mother asked, but he answered pettishly:
"Nothing, so pray don't look at me so curiously as if I was hiding some
terrible secret."

He was hiding a secret, and it almost betrayed itself, when at last he
said good-by to his mother, who followed him to the door and stood
looking after him in the darkness until the sound of his footsteps died
away upon the pavement. There was a fire in his room and Wilford sat
down to write the brief note he would leave, for when the night shut
down again he would not be there. He could not feel that the parting
from Katy would be final, because he did not believe she had sinned as
he counted sin, but she certainly preferred another to himself; she had
deceived him and played the successful hypocrite. This was Wilford's
accusation against his wife; this for what she must be punished, until
such time as his royal clemency saw fit to forgive and take her back as
he meant to. He had no fear of her going to Morris, or to the farmhouse
either, for much as she was attached to her family, he believed she
would shrink from a return to poverty, choosing rather the luxuries of
her city home. And he would put no impediment in the way of her staying
there as long as she liked; he would arrange that for her, feeling
himself very magnanimous as he thought of giving her permission to
invite her mother to New York as a kind of protection agains