Here was a stroke of what Mrs. Rider esteemed luck. She had stumbled at once upon the very person she had come to inquire about, and as she was not one to lose any time, she shook the rain-drops from her waterproof, and drawing near to the fire, turned to the lady in the easy-chair, and said: “I beg your pardon for my very unceremonious entrance. I rang twice, and then ventured to come in, it was raining so hard.” Josephine admitted that it was raining hard, and remarked that she expected to find it warmer in Southern Ohio than in Eastern New York, but she believed it was colder, and with a shiver she drew her shawl around her shoulders, shook back her hair, and lifted her blue eyes to Mrs. Rider, who responded: “You came from the East, then?” “Yes, madam, from Holburton. That is, I am from there just now, but it’s only two weeks since I returned from Europe, where I have been for a long time.” Here there was a solution in part of the mystery. This wife had been in Europe, and that was why the secret had been kept so long, and little Mrs. Dr. Rider flushed with eager excitement and pleasurable curiosity as she said: “From Europe! You must be tired with your long journey. Have you ever been in Rothsay before? From your having come from the East I suppose you must be a relative of Mrs. Forrest, who was born in Boston?” Josephine knew she did not suppose any such thing, and that in all probability she had seen the notice in the _Star_, and had come to spy out the land, but it was not her policy to parade her story unsolicited; so she merely replied that she was not a relative of Mrs. Forrest’s, though her mamma and that lady had been friends in their girlhood. To have been a friend of the late Mrs. Forrest stamped a person as somebody, and Mrs. Rider began at once to espouse the cause of this woman, to whom she said: “I hope you will excuse me if I seem forward in what I am about to say. I am Mrs. Rider, wife of the family physician, and a friend of Everard, and when I saw that notice of his marriage in the _Star_ I could hardly credit it, though I know such things have been before; but four years is such a long time to keep an affair of that kind a secret. May I ask if it is true, and if you are the wife?” “It is true, and I am his wife, or I should not be here,” Josey said, very quietly. “Yes, certainly not, of course,” Mrs. Rider replied, hardly knowing what she was saying, and wishing that the fair blonde whose eyes were looking so steadily into the fire would say something more, but she didn’t. She was waiting for her visitor to question her, which she presently did, for she could never leave the matter in this way, so she said: “You will pardon me, Mrs. Forrest, but knowing a little makes me want to know more. It seems so strange that Everard should have been a married man for more than four years and we never suspect it. It must have been a private marriage.”