h a little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed
behind the already dismantled vase on the chimney.

"I reckoned you had company, Ellen," he said gravely, kissing her.

"No," she said quickly. "That is," she stopped with a sudden surge of
color in her face that startled her, "there was--a man--here, in the
kitchen--who had a lame horse, and who wanted to get a fresh one. But
he went away an hour ago. And he wasn't in this room--at least, after it
was fixed up. So I've had no company."

She felt herself again blushing at having blushed, and a little
terrified. There was no reason for it. But for Jack's warning, she would
have been quite ready to tell her husband all. She had never blushed
before him over her past life; why she should now blush over seeing
Jack, of all people! made her utter a little hysterical laugh. I am
afraid that this experienced little woman took it for granted that her
husband knew that if Jack or any man had been there as a clandestine
lover, she would not have blushed at all. Yet with all her experience,
she did not know that she had blushed simply because it was to Jack that
she had confessed that she loved the man before her. Her husband noted
the blush as part of her general excitement. He permitted her to drag
him into the room and seat him before the hearth, where she sank down on
one knee to pull off his heavy rubber boots. But he waved her aside at
this, pulled them off with his own hands, and let her take them to the
kitchen and bring back his slippers. By this time a smile had lighted
up his hard face. The room was certainly more comfortable and cheerful.
Still he was a little worried; was there not in these changes a falling
away from the grace of self-abnegation which she had so sedulously
practiced?

When supper was served by Jane, in the dull dining-room, Mr. Rylands,
had he not been more engaged in these late domestic changes, might
have noticed that the Missouri girl waited upon him with a certain
commiserating air that was remarkable by its contrast with the frigid
ceremonious politeness with which she attended her mistress. It had not
escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack's abrupt departure
had noticed this change in the girl's demeanor to herself, and with
a woman's intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The
comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to,
Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him