g her lace with her hands again; "I can't tell you how
base he thought me."

"I think I understand," Kate said, slowly. "But how was it? It was not
true, of course."

Agnes lifted her face, raised her solemn, dark eyes mournfully to the
gaze of the earnest blue ones.

"It was not true," she replied simply; "I loved him with all my heart,
and him only. He was all the world to me, for I was alone, an orphan,
sisterless and brotherless. I had only one relative in the wide world--a
distant cousin, a young man, who boarded in the same house with me. I
was only a poor working-girl of New York, and my husband was far above
me--I thought so then, know it since. I knew very little of him. He
boarded in the same house, and I only saw him at the table. How he ever
came to love me--a little pale, quiet thing like me--I don't know; but
he did love me--he did--it is very sweet to remember that now. He loved
me, and he married me, but under an assumed name, under the name of
Darling, which I know now was not his real one."

She paused a little, and Kate looked at her with sudden breathless
interest. How like this story was to another, terribly familiar.

"We were married," Agnes went on, softly and sadly, "and I was happy.
Oh, Miss Danton, I can never tell you how unspeakably happy I was for a
time. But it was not for long. Troubles began to gather thick and fast
before many months. My husband was a gambler"--she paused a second or
two at Miss Danton's violent start--"and got into his old habits of
staying out very late at night, and often, when he had lost money,
coming home moody and miserable. I had no influence over him to stop
him. He had a friend, another gambler, and a very bad man, who drew him
on. It was very dreary sitting alone night after night until twelve or
one o'clock, and my only visitor was my cousin, the young man I told you
of. He was in love, and clandestinely engaged to a young lady, whose
family were wealthy and would not for a moment hear of the match. I was
his only confidante, and he liked to come in evenings and talk to me of
Helen. Sometimes, seeing me so lonely and low-spirited, he would stay
with me within half an hour of Harry's return; but Heaven knows neither
he nor I ever dreamed it could be wrong. No harm might ever have come of
it, for my husband knew and liked him, but for that gambling companion,
whose name was Furniss."

She paused again, trembling and agitated, for Miss Danton had uttered