of surprise. At a table near the door
Garnet's wife sat smiling eagerly after her husband as if it was at her
instigation he had risen and effusively accosted Ravenel; and both she
and Garnet knew that we all saw, when Ravenel said with an unmoved face
and colorless voice,

"No. No, I'm perfectly sure I never saw you before, sir." It may have
been wholly by chance, but in drawing a handkerchief as he spoke he
showed the hand whose thumb he had lost in saving Garnet's life.

The "star" hurried back to his seat and resumed conversation with the
partner of his fate--for a moment. But all at once she rose and went
out, he following, leaving their meal untouched.

Wife, as it was right she should, fell in love with Mrs. Fair on the
spot, and agreed with me by stolen glances I knew how to interpret, that
she was as lovely and refined a woman as she had ever met. Boston had
not removed that odd, winning drawl so common in the South, and which a
Southerner learns to miss so in the East. But when wife tried to have
her talk about Suez and its environs she looked puzzled for an instant
and then, with a light of mild amusement in her smile, said,

"O!--I never saw Suez; I was born and brought up in Chicago."

"No," said Ravenel, "it's Mrs. Champion who can tell you all about
Suez."

"That's so!" cried Champion, and turning to his wife, added, "What the
Saltehs don't know about Suez ain't wuth knowin', is it, Mahtha?"

That night I told wife this whole story. As I reached this point in it
she interposed a strong insinuation that I am a very poor story-teller.

"I thought," she continued, "I thought I had heard you speak of John
March as a married man, father of vast numbers of children."

To the last clause I objected and she modified it. "But, anyhow, you
leave too much to be inferred. I want to know what Garnet's fatal secret
was; and--well, I don't care especially what became of the commercial
traveler, but I _do_ want to hear a little about Barbara! Did she marry
the drummer?"

I said no, apologized for my vagueness and finished, in effect, thus:

Before Barbara came down-stairs, at Rosemont, that day, to see Mr.
March, she sent him Leggett's letter. Cornelius had caught scent of the
facts in it from Uncle Leviticus's traditions and had found them in the
county archives, which he had early learned the trick of exploring. The
two Ezra Jaspers, cousins, one the grantee of Widewood, the other of
Suez, had had, each, a