with a faint flush in her rather sallow cheeks.

"It's your say and nobody else's," assented her husband with grim
submissiveness. "You do what you like."

Mrs. Rivers mused. "There's only myself and Melinda here," she said with
sublime naivete; "and the children ain't old enough to be corrupted. I
am satisfied if you are, Seth," and she again looked at him inquiringly.

"Go ahead, then, and get ready for 'em," said Seth, hurrying away
with unaffected relief. "If you have everything fixed by nine o'clock,
that'll do."

Mrs. Rivers had everything "fixed" by that hour, including herself
presumably, for she had put on a gray dress which she usually wore
when shopping in the county town, adding a prim collar and cuffs. A
pearl-encircled brooch, the wedding gift of Seth, and a solitaire ring
next to her wedding ring, with a locket containing her children's hair,
accented her position as a proper wife and mother. At a quarter to nine
she had finished tidying the parlor, opening the harmonium so that
the light might play upon its polished keyboard, and bringing from
the forgotten seclusion of her closet two beautifully bound volumes of
Tupper's "Poems" and Pollok's "Course of Time," to impart a literary
grace to the centre table. She then drew a chair to the table and sat
down before it with a religious magazine in her lap. The wind roared
over the deep-throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and then
there came the sound of wheels and voices.

But Mrs. Rivers was not destined to see her guest that night. Dr.
Duchesne, under the safe lee of the door, explained that Mr. Hamlin
had been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate, was
asleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object, they would
carry him at once to his room. In the flaring and guttering of candles,
the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of coats and shawls, and the
bewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was only vaguely conscious of a
slight figure muffled tightly in a cloak carried past her in the arms
of a grizzled negro up the staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne. With
the closing of the front door on the tumultuous world without, a silence
fell again on the little parlor.

When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his patient was
being undressed and put to bed by his negro servant, who, however, would
return with the doctor to-night, but that the patient would be left with
everything that was necessary, and