looked after the couple, witnessing the
meeting between Katy and old Whitey, and guessing rightly that the
corn-colored vehicle was the one sent to transport Katy home. He was
very moody for the remainder of the route between Silverton and Albany,
where he parted with his Canandaigua friends, they going on to the
westward, while he stopped all night in Albany, where he had some
business to transact for his father. And this was why he did not reach
New York until late in the afternoon of the following day.

He was intending to tell his mother everything, except indeed that he
paid Katy's bills. He would rather keep that to himself, as it might
shock his mother's sense of propriety and make her think less of Katy,
impulsive, confiding Katy, little dreaming as on that rainy afternoon
she sat in the kitchen at Silverton, with her feet in the stove-oven and
the cat asleep in her lap, of the conversation taking place between
Wilford Cameron and his mother. They had left the dinner table, and
lighting his cigar, which for that one time the mother permitted in the
parlor, Wilford opened the subject by asking her to guess what took him
off so suddenly with Mrs. Woodhull.

The mother did not know--unless--and a strange light gleamed in her
eyes, as she asked if it were some girl.

"Yea, mother, it was," and without any reservation Wilford frankly told
the story of his interest in Katy Lennox.

He admitted that she was poor and unaccustomed to society, but he loved
her more than words could express.

"Not as I loved Genevra," he said, as he saw his mother about to speak,
and there came a look of intense pain into his fine eyes as he
continued: "That was the passion of a boy of nineteen, simulated by
secrecy, but this is different--this is the love of a mature man of
thirty, who feels that he is capable of judging for himself."

In Wilford's voice there was a tone warning the mother that opposition
would only feed the flame, and so she offered none directly, but heard
him patiently to the end, and then quietly questioned him of Katy and
her family, especially the last. What did he know of it? Was it one to
detract from the Cameron line kept untarnished so long? Were the
relatives such as he never need blush to own, even if they came there
into their drawing-room, as they would come if Katy did?

Wilford thought of Uncle Ephraim as he had seen him upon the platform at
Silverton, and could scarcely repress a smile as he pictu