to succeed with young girls
when they're conscientious (as Margaret was), unless they happen to care
for some one else; Margaret didn't care for any one else, and so she was
caught. We were married; and I give you my word I fully intended to
treat her as well as I knew how. But--ill luck got mixed with it."

Here Lanse changed his position again, and clasping his hands under his
head, gazed up at the dense green above. "Let's hope a moccasin won't
take a walk out on one of those branches and fall down; they do it
sometimes, I know. We had not been married long, Margaret and I, when
the other one wrote to me."

"Nice sort of person."

"Precisely. But I cared more about her than I did about any one in the
world, and that makes a difference. I thought she wrote to me because
she couldn't help it--in short, because she cared so much for me. That's
taking. And now here's where ill luck took a hand. Did I intend to let
any of this in the least touch Margaret--interfere with _her_? As far as
possible from it; my intention was that she should never know or dream
of it, it was all to be kept religiously from her. Why--I wouldn't have
had her know it for anything, first on her own account, then on mine;
the wife of Lansing Harold," went on Lanse, smiling a little at himself,
yet evidently meaning exactly what he said, "must be above suspicion, by
which I intend the verb, not the noun; up to thirty, she must be too
innocent to suspect. But what do you suppose came next? By the most
extraordinary chance in the world Margaret herself got hold of one of my
letters to--to the other person. She came upon the loose sheets by
accident, and thought it was something that I must have been writing
some time to her; she never imagined that it was to any one else, or
she wouldn't have read it, she was punctiliousness itself in such
matters; but her eyes happened to fall first upon the middle sheet,
where there was no name, and the--'the language,' as she afterwards
expressed it, made her believe that it was addressed to herself; a man
could only write in that way to his wife, she supposed. But at the end
she was undeceived, for there she found the other name. Of course we had
a scene when I came home. I was horribly annoyed by what had happened,
but I did my best to be nice to her. I told her that it was a miserable
accident in every way, her coming upon that letter, that I could never
forgive myself for having left it where I did; I told h