f my affair.
If he wants to fight about another man's wife, let him. It's not the
best way to stop the scandal."

"You know, I think Ferdy is a little relieved to get out of that," added
Mr. Minturn. "Ferdy wants money, and big money. He can't expect to get
money there. They say the chief cause of the trouble was Wentworth would
not put up money enough for her. He has got his eye on the
Lancaster-Yorke combine, and he is all devotion to the widow now."

"She won't look at him. She has too much sense. Besides, she likes
Keith," said Stirling.

As Mr. Trimmer and his friend said, if Keith expected to silence all the
tongues that were clacking with his name and affairs, he was likely to
be disappointed. There are some people to whose minds the distribution
of scandal is as great a delight as the sweetest morsel is to the
tongue. Besides, there was one person who had a reason for spreading the
report. Ferdy Wickersham had returned and was doing his best to give it
circulation.

Norman Wentworth received in his mail, one morning, a thin letter over
which a frown clouded his brow. The address was in a backhand. He had
received a letter in the same handwriting not long previously--an
anonymous letter. It related to his wife and to one whom he had held in
high esteem. He had torn it up furiously in little bits, and had dashed
them into the waste-basket as he had dashed the matter from his mind. He
was near tearing this letter up without reading it; but after a moment
he opened the envelope. A society notice in a paper the day before had
contained the name of his wife and that of Mr. Gordon Keith, and this
was not the only time he had seen the two names together. As his eye
glanced over the single page of disguised writing, a deeper frown grew
on his brow. It was only a few lines; but it contained a barbed arrow
that struck and rankled:

"When the cat's away
The mice will play.
If you have cut your wisdom-teeth,
You'll know your mouse. His name is ----"

It was signed, "_A True Friend_."

Norman crushed the paper in his band, in a rage for having read it. But
it was too late. He could not banish it from his mind: so many things
tallied with it. He had heard that Keith was there a great deal. Why had
he ceased speaking of it of late?

When Keith next met Norman there was a change in the latter. He was cold
and almost morose; answered Keith absently, and after a little while
rose and left him rather