reparing her for the great
shock awaiting her.

"Wilford is not dead," he said, when at last she was in the carriage.
"It is worse than that, I fear. We have traced him to the Philadelphia
train, which he took on Saturday. His manner all that day and the
previous one was very strange, while from some words he dropped my wife
is led to suppose there was trouble between you two. Was there?" and
Father Cameron's gray eyes rested earnestly on the white, frightened
face which looked up so quickly as Katy gasped:

"No, oh, no; he never was kinder to me than when we parted last Friday
morning at Mrs. Mills'. There is some mistake. He would not leave me,
though he has not been quite the same since--"

Katy was interrupted by the carriage stopping before her home; but when
they had been admitted to the parlor where a fire was lighted, Father
Cameron said:

"Go on now. Wilford has not been the same since when?"

Thus importuned Katy continued:

"Since baby died. I think he blamed me as the cause of its death."

"Don't babies die every day?" Father Cameron growled, kicking at the
hearth rug, while Katy, without considering that he had never heard of
Genevra, continued:

"And then it was worse after I found out about Genevra, his first wife."

"Genevra! Genevra, Wilford's first wife! Thunder and lightning! what are
you talking about?" and Father Cameron bent down to look in Katy's face,
thinking she was going mad.

But Katy was not mad, and knowing it was now too late to retract, she
told the story of Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, utterly
confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and
footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at
his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with
a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice
which showed he meant what he said.

"It's all accounted for now," he said, "the piles of money that boy had
abroad, his privacy with his mother, and all the other tomfoolery I
could not understand. Katy," and pausing in his walk, Mr. Cameron came
close to his daughter-in-law, who was lying with her face upon the sofa.
"Katy, be glad your baby died. Had it lived it might have proved a curse
just as mine have done--not all, for Bell, though fiery as a pepper-pod,
has some heart, some sense--and there was Jack, my oldest boy, a little
fast, it's true; but when he died over the sea, I forgave all that,