“I will _never_ tell them!” cried Marcia. “Let me go! I can starve there and freeze, and if he finds me dead in the house, none of them shall have the right to blame him,--to say that he left me,--that he deserted his little child! Oh! oh! oh! oh! What shall I do?” The hapless creature shook with the thick-coming sobs that overpowered her now, and Atherton refrained once more. She did not seem ashamed before him of the sorrows which he felt it a sacrilege to know, and in a blind instinctive way he perceived that in proportion as he was a stranger it was possible for her to bear her disgrace in his presence. He spoke at last from the hint he found in this fact: “Will you let me mention the matter to Miss Kingsbury?” She looked at him with sad intensity in the eyes, as if trying to fathom any nether thought that he might have. It must have seemed to her at first that he was mocking her, but his words brought her the only relief from her self-upbraiding she had known. To suffer kindness from Miss Kingsbury would be in some sort an atonement to Bartley for the wrong her jealousy had done him; it would be self-sacrifice for his sake; it would be expiation. “Yes, tell her,” she answered with a promptness whose obscure motive was not illumined by the flash of passionate pride with which she added, “I shall not care for _her_.” She rose again, and Atherton did not detain her; but when she had left him he lost no time in writing to her father the facts of the case as her visit had revealed them. He spoke of her reluctance to have her situation known to her family, but assured the Squire that he need have no anxiety about her for the present. He promised to keep him fully informed in regard to her, and to telegraph the first news of Mr. Hubbard. He left the Squire to form his own conjectures, and to take whatever action he thought best. For his own part, he had no question that Hubbard had abandoned his wife, and had stolen Halleck's money; and the detectives to whom he went were clear that it was a case of European travel. XXXV. Atherton went from the detectives to Miss Kingsbury, and boldly resisted the interdict at her door, sending up his name with the message that he wished to see her immediately on business. She kept him waiting while she made a frightened toilet, and leaving the letter to him which she had begun half finished on her desk, she came down to meet him in a flutter of despondent conjecture. He took her mechanically yielded hand, and seated himself on the sofa beside her. “I sent word that I had come on business,” he said, “but it is no affair of yours,”--she hardly knew whether to feel relieved or disappointed,--“except as you make all unhappy people's affairs your own.” “Oh!” she murmured in meek protest, and at the same time she remotely wondered if these affairs were his. “I came to you for help,” he began again, and again she interrupted him in deprecation.