Fortunately for her plans the next morning’s mail from Paris brought her another letter from Agnes, who thought she might be anxious to know what she had decided to do, for the present, at least, until they could consult together. But Josephine cared very little what Agnes did. _She_ was going to the Forrest House, and she was glad that Dr. Matthewson, who had been with her for a time at the hotel, had started for Italy only a few days before. He might have opposed her plan, and she knew from experience that it was hard to resist the influence he had over her. Utterly reckless and unprincipled, he seemed really to like this woman, whom he thoroughly understood, and in whose nature he recognized something which responded to his own. Two or three times he had talked openly to her of a divorce, and had hinted at a glorious life in Italy or wherever she chose to go. But Josephine was too shrewd to consider that for a moment. Dr. Matthewson lived only by his wits, or to put it in plainer terms, by gambling and speculation and intrigue. To-day he was rich, indulging in every possible luxury and extravagance, and to-morrow he was poor and unable to pay even his board; and much as she liked him she had no fancy to share his style of living. She preferred rather to be the hated wife of Everard Forrest and the mistress of his house; so she took Agnes’s letter to Mrs. Arnold, and with a great show of feeling told her her mother was dead, and her sister Aggie left all alone, and wanting her so badly that she felt it her imperative duty to start at once for America. “I am sorry, of course, to leave you,” she said, “but you have so many acquaintances now, and your health is so much better, that you will do very nicely without me, I am sure, and I have long felt that my position was merely a sinecure. I am only an unnecessary expense.” Mrs. Arnold knew that to some extent this was true. Josephine was rather an expensive luxury, and she had more than once seen in her signs of selfishness and duplicity which shocked and displeased her. But the girl had been uniformly kind and attentive to her, and she was loth to part with her, and tried to persuade her to wait till spring. But Josephine was determined, and seeing this Mrs. Arnold ceased to oppose her, and generously gave her two hundred dollars for her expenses home; and Josephine took it, and smiled sweetly through her tears, and kissed her friend gushingly, and then hurried away to complete her preparations. The next day she left Dresden for Paris, where she staid a week, while she selected a most becoming wardrobe in black, and was delighted to see what a pretty, appealing woman she was in her mourning, and how fair and pure her skin showed through her long crape vail, and how blue and pathetic her eyes looked, especially when she managed to bring a tear into them.