a note from him, and I fancy it's
about that."

He did not care to say squarely that he had lost. He knew that she was
sufficiently distressed as it was, and he did not care to be too abrupt
just now.

"You don't say!" replied Lillian, with surprise and fright in her voice,
and getting up.

She had been so used to a world where prisons were scarcely thought of,
where things went on smoothly from day to day without any noticeable
intrusion of such distressing things as courts, jails, and the like,
that these last few months had driven her nearly mad. Cowperwood had so
definitely insisted on her keeping in the background--he had told her
so very little that she was all at sea anyhow in regard to the whole
procedure. Nearly all that she had had in the way of intelligence had
been from his father and mother and Anna, and from a close and almost
secret scrutiny of the newspapers.

At the time he had gone to the county jail she did not even know
anything about it until his father had come back from the court-room and
the jail and had broken the news to her. It had been a terrific blow to
her. Now to have this thing suddenly broken to her in this offhand way,
even though she had been expecting and dreading it hourly, was too much.

She was still a decidedly charming-looking woman as she stood holding
her daughter's garment in her hand, even if she was forty years old to
Cowperwood's thirty-five. She was robed in one of the creations of their
late prosperity, a cream-colored gown of rich silk, with dark brown
trimmings--a fetching combination for her. Her eyes were a little
hollow, and reddish about the rims, but otherwise she showed no sign of
her keen mental distress. There was considerable evidence of the former
tranquil sweetness that had so fascinated him ten years before.

"Isn't that terrible?" she said, weakly, her hands trembling in a
nervous way. "Isn't it dreadful? Isn't there anything more you can do,
truly? You won't really have to go to prison, will you?" He objected
to her distress and her nervous fears. He preferred a stronger, more
self-reliant type of woman, but still she was his wife, and in his day
he had loved her much.

"It looks that way, Lillian," he said, with the first note of real
sympathy he had used in a long while, for he felt sorry for her now. At
the same time he was afraid to go any further along that line, for fear
it might give her a false sense as to his present attitude toward her
w