is attention two or three times and failed, she
just fell from her chair to the floor. That roused him. He has hardly
left her since."

"I don't think they look very happy, do you, for so rich and handsome a
couple?"

"Perhaps he is dissipated. I have noticed that the old gentleman never
leaves them."

"Well, well, he may be dissipated; handsome men are very apt to be. But
I wouldn't care if----"

Here the dog gave a yelp and bolted. Miss Butterworth had unconsciously
pinched him, in her indignation, possibly, at the turn these
rattle-pated young ladies' conversation was taking. This made a
diversion, and the young girls moved off, leaving Miss Butterworth
without occupation. But a young man who at that moment crossed her path
gave her enough to think about.

"You recognize them? There is no mistake?" he whispered.

"None; the one this way is the young man I saw leave Mr. Adams's house,
and the other is the old gentleman who came in afterward."

"Mr. Gryce advises you to return home. He is going to arrest the young
man." And Sweetwater passed on.

Miss Butterworth strolled to a seat and sat down. She felt weak; she
seemed to see that young wife, sick, overwhelmed, struggling with her
great fear, sink under this crushing blow, with no woman near her
capable of affording the least sympathy. The father did not impress her
as being the man to hold up her fainting head or ease her bruised heart.
He had an icy look under his polished exterior which repelled this
keen-eyed spinster, and as she remembered the coldness of his ways, she
felt herself seized by an irresistible impulse to be near this young
creature when the blow fell, if only to ease the tension of her own
heartstrings, which at that moment ached keenly over the part she had
felt herself obliged to play in this matter.

But when she rose to look for Mr. Gryce, she found him gone; and upon
searching the piazza for the other two gentlemen, she saw them just
vanishing round the corner in the direction of a small smoking-room. As
she could not follow them, she went upstairs, and, meeting a maid in the
upper hall, asked for Mrs. Adams. She was told that Mrs. Adams was sick,
but was shown the door of her room, which was at the end of a long hall.
As all the halls terminated in a window under which a sofa was to be
found, she felt that circumstances were in her favor, and took her seat
upon the sofa before her in a state of great complacency. Instantly a
sweet