Mrs. Varrick drew herself up to her full height and advanced into the room like an angry queen.

"Hubert," she cried, in a tone that he had never heard from his mother's lips before, "I can make all due allowance for the follies of a young man, but I say this to you: you should never have permitted this girl to cross your mother's threshold."

"Give me a chance to speak a few words, mother," he interrupted. "Let me set matters straight. The whole fault is mine, because I have not explained this affair to you before. I put it off from day to day."

In a few brief words he explained.

In her own mind, quick as a flash, a sudden thought came to her that there was more behind this than had been told to her.

She had wondered why Gerelda Northrup, the beauty and the heiress, fled from her handsome son at the very altar. Now she began to think that she[Pg 46] might have had a reason for it other than that which the world knew.

[Pg 46]

She was diplomatic; she was too worldly wise to seek to separate them then and there. She said to herself it must be done by strategy.

"This puts the matter in quite a different light, Hubert," she said; "and while I am slightly incensed at your not telling me about this affair, I can readily understand the kindly impulse which prompted you to protect this young girl. But I can not allow you to outdo me; Jessie must consider me quite as much her friend as you. She shall find a home here with us, and it will be pleasant, after all, to see a bright, girlish face in these dull old rooms, and hear the sound of merry laughter."

This remark threw Hubert off his guard.

"That is spoken like my noble-hearted mother!" he cried, enthusiastically. "I knew you could not be angry with me when you understood it."

The girl stepped hesitatingly forward. From the first instant that she beheld her standing on the threshold, she had conceived a great dislike and fear of Hubert's haughty lady-mother. Even the conversation and explanation which she had just listened to did not change her first impression.

Thus it happened that Jessie Bain took up her abode in the magnificent home of the Varricks.

But Hubert's mother made it the one object 

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