call out when I recognized your
voice. The room was pitch dark. I could not see you; but then I was
about to speak, when I recognized another voice--Mrs. Stillwater's. You
had let yourself in by your own key, through the door leading from the
hall. She had come in through the door leading from her room, which was
on the opposite side of the parlor from mine."

Cora paused to wait for the effect of her words.

Mr. Fabian drove on slowly in silence.

"I sat there quite still, too much surprised to speak or move."

"And so you overheard that interview," said Mr. Fabian, with a dash of
anger in his usually pleasant voice.

"I could not escape. I was amazed, spellbound, too confused to know what
to do."

"Well?"

"I gathered from your words that you and she were either secretly
married or secretly engaged to be married."

"That was your opinion."

"What other opinion could I form? You were providing her with a house
and an income. She was speaking of herself as a daughter-in-law sure to
be acceptable to your father and mother. Of course, I judged from that
that you were either wedded or betrothed, which was an incomprehensible
thing to me, who had been led to believe that the lady was the wife of
Captain Stillwater, remaining in Baltimore to meet her husband, whose
ship was then daily expected to arrive."

"You were wrong, Cora," said Mr. Fabian, now speaking in his natural
tone without a shade of anger--quite wrong, my dear; there was nothing
of the sort. I was never engaged to Mrs. Stillwater."

"Then she subsequently refused you. I am telling you what I thought
then, not what I think now. I have heard from her own lips that after
her husband's death you proposed to her and she refused you."

Mr. Fabian shook with silent laughter. When he recovered he asked:

"And you believed her?"

"I do not know. I was in a maze. There were so many contradictory and
inconsistent circumstances surrounding the woman that seemed to live and
move in a web of deception woven by herself," said Cora, wearily, as if
tired of the subject.

"And, after all, she is a very shallow creature, incapable of any deep
scheming; there is no great harm. She knows that she is beautiful--still
beautiful--and her only art is subtle flattery. She flattered your
grandfather 'to the bent of his humor,' with no deeper design than to
marry him and gain a luxurious home and an ample dower, as well as an
adoring husband. You see she has succeeded