“Don't you understand, Olive? This is the notice that the law requires she shall have to come and defend her cause, and it has been sent by the clerk of the court, there, to the address that villain must have given in the knowledge that it could reach her only by one chance in ten thousand.” “And it has come to you! Oh, Ben! Who sent it to _you_?” The brother and sister looked at each other, but neither spoke the awestricken thought that was in both their hearts. “Ben,” she cried in a solemn ecstasy of love and pride, “I would rather be you this minute than any other man in the world!” “Don't!” pleaded Halleck. His head dropped, and then he lifted it by a sudden impulse. “Olive!”--But the impulse failed, and he only said, “I want you to go to Atherton with me. We mustn't lose time. Have Cyrus get a carriage. Go down and tell them we're going out. I'll be ready as soon as you are.” But when she called to him from below that the carriage had come and she was waiting, he would have refused to go with her if he durst. He no longer wished to keep back the fact, but he felt an invalid's weariness of it, a sick man's inadequacy to the farther demands it should make upon him. He crept slowly down the stairs, keeping a tremulous hold upon the rail; and he sank with a sigh against the carriage cushions, answering Olive's eager questions and fervid comments with languid monosyllables. They found the Athertons at coffee, and Clara would have them come to the dining-room and join them. Halleck refused the coffee, and while Olive told what had happened he looked listlessly about the room, aware of a perverse sympathy with Bartley, from Bartley's point of view: Bartley might never have gone wrong if he had had all that luxury; and why should he not have had it, as well as Atherton? What right had the untempted prosperity of such a man to judge the guilt of such men as himself and Bartley Hubbard? Olive produced the newspaper from her lap, where she kept both hands upon it, and opened it to the advertisement in dramatic corroboration of what she had been telling Atherton. He read it and passed it to Clara. “When did this come to you?” Olive answered for him. “This evening,--just now. Didn't I say that?” “No,” said Atherton; and he added to Halleck, gently: “I beg your pardon. Did you notice the dates?” “Yes,” answered Halleck, with cold refusal of Atherton's tone of reparation. “The cause is set for hearing on the 11th,” said Atherton. “This is the 8th. The time is very short.” “It's long enough,” said Halleck, wearily. “Oh, telegraph!” cried Clara. “Telegraph them instantly that she never dreamt of leaving him! Abandonment! Oh, if they only knew how she had been slaving her lingers off for the last two years to keep a home for him to come back to, they'd give _her_ the divorce!” Atherton smiled and turned to Halleck: “Do you know what their law is, now? It was changed two years ago.”