he recognition of this fact imposed upon me two almost irreconcilable
duties I was slower to perceive. But soon, too soon, it became apparent
even to my girlish mind, that, as the wife of the man who had committed
this great and inconceivable wrong, I was bound, not only to make
an immediate attempt to release the women he so outrageously held
imprisoned in their own house, but to so release them that he should
escape the opprobrium of his own act.

That I might have time to think, and that I might be saved, if but for
one day, contact with one it was almost my duty to hate, I came back to
him with the plea that I might spend the day with the Vandykes instead
of accompanying him down town as usual. I think he was glad of the
freedom my absence offered him, for he gave me the permission I asked,
and in ten minutes I was in my old home. Mrs. Vandyke received me with
effusion. It was not the first time she had seen me since my marriage,
but it was the first time she had seen me alone.

"My dear!" she exclaimed, turning me about till my unwilling face met
the light, "is this the wild-wood lassie I gave into Mr. Allison's
keeping a week ago!"

"It is the house!" I excitedly gasped, "the empty, lonely, echoing
house! I am afraid in it, even with my husband. It gives me creepy
feelings, _as if a murder had been committed in it_."

She broke into a laugh; I hear the sound now, an honest, amused and
entirely reassuring laugh, that relieved me in one way and depressed me
in another. "The idea! _that_ house!" she cried. "I never thought you
a girl to have nervous fancies. Why, it is the most matter-of-fact old
mansion in the city. All its traditions are of the most respectable
kind; no skeleton in those closets! By the way, my dear, has Mr. Allison
shown you any of the curious old things those rooms must contain?"

I managed to stammer out a reply, "Mr. Allison does not consider that
his rights extend so far. I have never crossed the drawing-room floor."

"Well! that is carrying honor to an extreme. I am afraid I should not
be able to suppress my curiosity to that extent. Is he afraid of the old
lady returning unexpectedly and catching him?"

I could not echo her laugh; I could not even smile; I could only pucker
up my brows as if angry.

"Everything is kept in shape, so that if she does return she will find
the house comfortable," I said; then, with a rising sense of having by
this speech suggested a falsehood, I hastily