said Ridgeway,       “as that savage-looking escort of hers, who has been haunting the house ever since, can testify. My belief is, that, like an enterprising idiot as you are, you've dragged that girl out of her bed, that we might mutually bore each other.”      

       Mr. McClosky was too much stunned by this evidence of Ridgeway's apparently superhuman penetration to reply. After enjoying his host's confusion for a moment with his eyes, Ridgeway's mouth asked grimly,—     

       “And who is this girl, anyway?”      

       “Nancy's.”      

       “Your wife's?”      

       “Yes. But look yar, Ridgeway,” said McClosky, laying one hand imploringly on Ridgeway's sleeve, “not a word about her to Jinny. She thinks her mother's dead—died in Missouri. Eh!”      

       Ridgeway nearly rolled from the veranda in an excess of rage. “Good God! Do you mean to say that you have been concealing from her a fact that any day, any moment, may come to her ears? That you've been letting her grow up in ignorance of something that by this time she might have outgrown and forgotten? That you have been, like a besotted old ass, all these years slowly forging a thunderbolt that any one may crush her with? That”—but here Ridgeway's cough took possession of his voice, and even put a moisture into his dark eyes, as he looked at McClosky's aimless hand feebly employed upon his beard.     

       “But,” said McClosky, “look how she's done! She's held her head as high as any of 'em. She's to be married in a month to the richest man in the county; and,” he added cunningly, “Jack Ashe ain't the kind o' man to sit by and hear any thing said of his wife or her relations, you bet! But hush—that's her foot on the stairs. She's cummin'.”      

       She came. I don't think the French window ever held a finer view than when she put aside the curtains, and stepped out. She had dressed herself simply and hurriedly, but with a woman's knowledge of her best points; so that you got the long curves of her shapely limbs, the shorter curves of her round waist and shoulders, the long sweep of her yellow braids, the light of her gray eyes, and even the delicate rose of her complexion, without knowing how it was delivered to you.     

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