d the other gently now,
and with a great sigh of relief. Suddenly she came nearer and touched
Kitty's arm. "And thank you for saying so," she added. "He and I have
been so long parted, and you have seen so much more of him than I have
of late years! You know him better--as he is. If I said something sharp
just now, please forgive me. I am--indeed, I am grateful to you and your
mother."

She paused. It was hard for her to say what she felt she must say, for
she did not know how her husband would receive her--he had done without
her for so long; and she might need this girl and her mother sorely. The
girl was a friend in the best sense, or she would not have sent for her.
She must remind herself of this continually lest she should take wrong
views.

Kitty nodded, but for a moment she did not reply. Her hand was on the
baize-covered desk. All at once, with determination in her eyes, she
said: "You didn't use him right or you'd not have been parted for five
years. You were rich and he was poor, he is poor now, though he may be
rich any day, and he wouldn't stay with you because he wouldn't take
your money to live on. If you had been a real wife to him he wouldn't
have seen that he'd be using your money; he'd have taken it as though it
was his own, out of the purse always open and belonging to both, just as
though you were partners. You must feel--"

"Hush, for pity's sake, hush!" interrupted the other.

"You are going to see him again," Kitty persisted. "Now, don't you think
it just as well to know what the real truth is?"

"How do you know what is the truth?" asked the trembling little stranger
with a last attempt to hold her position, to conceal from herself the
actual facts.

"The Young Doctor and my mother and I were with him all the time he was
ill after he was shot, and the Trial had only told half the truth. He
wanted us, his best friends here, to know the whole truth, so he told us
that he left you because he couldn't bear to live on your money. It was
you made him feel that, though he didn't say so. All the time he told
his story he spoke of you as though you were some goddess, some great
queen--"

A look of hope, of wonder, of relief came into the tiny creature's eyes.
"He spoke like that of me; he said--?"

"He said what no one else would have said, probably; but that's the way
with people in love--they see what no one else sees, they think what no
one else thinks. He talked with a sort of hush in his v