ng. "_When_
was he here last?" he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.

She did not appear to resent it. "Let me see," mused she. "When was it I
lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year's
day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet
brocade," she pettishly sighed. "And papa came the next week, after you
had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember _that_,
for not a dollar did he leave me."

"Ona!" exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,
while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble
diamonds were brilliantly shining.

"O," she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling
ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes
doubted, swept over her careless face. "I was enabled to procure them in
time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds." She did
not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she
needed, but he may have understood that without being told.

"And that is the last time you have seen him?" He held her eyes with
his, she could not look away.

"The very last, sir; strange to say."

His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards the
door.

"May I ask," she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, "what is
the reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?"

"Certainly," said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotion
of pity in his glance. "I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty I
owe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secret
responsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you."

She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the image
listening in the glass. "You choose strange times in which to be
struck," said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with a
lift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thought
the most becoming.

"Conscience is the chooser, not I," declared he, for once allowing
himself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.

His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.

"I should like Edward very much," murmured she in a burst of confidence
to her own reflection in the glass, "if only he would not bother himself
so much about that same disagreeable conscience."

* * * * *

"You look unhappy," said Mr.