“Miss Belknap, indeed!” Josephine exclaimed, indignantly. “Don’t talk to me of Miss Belknap, the tricky, deceitful thing, to come into our house, knowing all the time who I was, and yet pretending such entire ignorance of everything. How I hate her, and you, too, for sending her there as a spy upon my actions.” “You are mistaken,” Everard said. “Bee was no tale-bearer, and no spy upon your actions. Neither was she sent to you, for I did not know she was there till she wrote me to that effect. She had the best of motives in going to your mother’s house. She wished to see you for herself, and,—pardon me, Josey, if I speak very plainly,—she wished to find all the good there was in you, so as to know better how to befriend you, should you need it.” “Which, thank Heaven, I don’t, so she had her trouble for her pains,” was Josephine’s rejoinder, of which Everard took no notice, but simply went on: “Beatrice has been your best friend from the moment she first heard of you, and after father’s death she advised me to go straight to you and tell you the whole truth, and offer you a home such as I could make for you myself,—in short, offer you poverty and protection as my acknowledged wife.” “Strange you did not follow her advice, with your high notions of morality,” Josephine said, with a sneer; and he replied: “I started to do it in good faith, and went as far as Albany without a thought that I should not do it, but there I began to waver, for I saw you, myself unseen and my presence unsuspected, so that you acted and spoke your feelings without restraint.