though your
brand be on it,--Joseph!"

She hissed the name, and, with hurried steps, and a low, scornful
laugh, departed. As Miss Wimple, all aghast, leaned forward with quick
breath and tumultuous heart, and peered through the gloom toward where
the silver moonlight lay across the further end of the bridge, she saw
a white dress flash across a bright space and disappear. Then Philip
Withers stepped forth into the moonlight, stood there for a minute or
two, and gazed in the direction of a branch road which made off from
the turnpike close to the bridge, and led, at right angles to it, to
the railroad station on the right; then slowly, and without once
looking back, he followed the turnpike to the town.

All astonished, bewildered, full of strange, vague fears, Miss Wimple
remained in the now awful gloom and stillness of the bridge till he had
quite disappeared. Then gathering up her wits with an effort, she
resumed her homeward way. As she emerged from the shadows into the same
bright place which Withers and his mysterious companion had just
passed, she spied something dark lying on the ground. She stooped and
picked it up; it was a small morocco pocket-book lined with pink silk.

Good Heaven! She remembered,--the one she had sold to Miss Madeline
Splurge that afternoon,--the very same! So, then, that was her voice,
her dress; she had, indeed, dimly thought of Madeline more than once,
while that woman was speaking so bitterly,--but had not recognized her
tones, nor once fancied it might be she. Now she easily recalled her
words, and understood some of her allusions. And her wild, distracted,
incoherent speech in the shop, too,--ah! it was all too plain; that was
surely she; but what might be the nature or degree of her trouble Miss
Wimple dared not try to guess. This Philip Withers,--was he a villain,
after all? "Had he--this poor lady--Oh, God forbid! No, no, no!"

She opened the pocket-book;--a visiting-card was all it contained. She
drew it forth,--"Mr. Philip Withers,"--yes, she knew it by that broken
corner, as though it had been marked so for a purpose. She held it up
before her eyes where the moon was brightest, and--turned the other
side.

"Ah, me!" exclaimed that Chevalier Bayard in shabby, skimped delaine,
"what was I going to do?"

Blushing, she returned the card to its place, and hiding the
pocket-book in her honorable bosom, hurried homeward. But her soul was
troubled as she went; sometimes she sobbe