d Lydia, and sat
down suddenly, as though her strength were spent.

The woman opposite her flushed a purplish red. There was a long silence.
Lydia looked at her servant with a face before which Ellen finally
lowered her eyes.

"I am sure, Mrs. Hollister, if you don't think I'm worth the place, and
if you think you can manage without me to-morrow night, I'll go this
minute," she said coolly.

Lydia did not remove her eyes from the other's flushed face. "You must
go far away from Bellevue," she said. "You must not take a place
anywhere near here."

Ellen looked up quickly, and down again. The color slowly died out of
her face. After a sullen silence, "Yes," she said.

"That is all," said Lydia.

* * * * *

Paul found his wife that evening still very white. She explained Ellen's
disappearance with a dry brevity. "That we should have continued to give
that--that awful--to give her opportunity to work upon a boy of--" she
ended brokenly. "Suppose he had been my brother!"

Paul was aghast. "But, my _dear_! To-morrow is the night of the dinner!
Couldn't you have put off a few days this sudden fit of--"

Lydia broke from her white stillness with a wild outcry. She flung
herself on her husband, pressing her hands on his mouth and crying out
fiercely: "No, no, Paul! Not that! I can't bear to have you say that! I
hoped--I hoped you wouldn't think of--"

Paul was fresh from an interview with Dr. Melton, and in his ears rang
innumerable cautions against excitement or violent emotions. With his
usual competent grasp on the essentials of a situation that he could not
understand at all, he put aside for the time his exasperated
apprehensions about the next day's event, and picking Lydia up bodily he
carried her to a couch, closing her lips with gentle hands and soothing
her with caresses, like a frightened child.

"Oh, you are good to me!" she murmured finally, quieted. "I must try
not to get so excited. But, Paul--I _can't_ tell you--about--about that
letter--and later, when I saw Ellen, it was as though we fought hand to
hand for Patsy, though she never--"

"There, there, dearest! Don't talk about it--just rest. You've worked
yourself into a perfect fever." If there was latent in the indulgent
accent of this speech the coda, "All about nothing," it escaped Lydia's
ear. She only knew that the long nightmare of her lonely, horrified day
was over. She clung to her husband, and than