She knew that, and it seemed to her as if his eyes were following hers to the bay window and seeing the letter hidden under the carpet. She must say something by way of an excuse, and with her ready tact she answered him: “I _am_ keeping something from you. I have written Aggie to come to me. I was so lonesome and sick, and wanted her so much. You are not angry, are you?” Her great blue eyes were swimming with genuine tears, for she was a little afraid of what her husband might say to the liberty she had taken without his permission. Fortunately, he was in one of his most genial moods. Dr. Rider had said to him privately that in her present nervous condition Josephine must not be crossed; and he answered laughingly that he was not angry, but on the contrary, very glad Aggie was coming, as he believed her a capital nurse; and “Josey,” he added, “you need building up. You are growing as thin as a shad and white as a sheet, and that I don’t like. I thought _you_ would never fade and fall off like Bee Belknap. I met her this morning, and she positively begins to look like an old maid. I hear she is to be married soon,” and he shot a keen, quick glance at his wife, into whose pale cheeks the hot blood rushed at once, and whose voice was not quite steady as she asked: “Married,—to whom? Not Everard?” “No-o,” the doctor answered, contemptuously, annoyed at Josephine’s manner. “I hope she has more sense than to marry that milksop, who has grown to be more like a Methodist parson than anything else. You called him a milksop yourself, once,” he continued, as he saw the flash in Josephine’s eyes, “and you must not blame me for taking my cue from you, who know him better than I do. I believe, on my soul, you half feared he was going to marry, and were sorry for it. He is nothing to you. A woman cannot have two husbands; that’s bigamy.” The doctor was growing irritable, and Josephine knew it, but she could not forbear answering him tartly: “There are worse crimes than bigamy,—a great deal,—and they are none the less worse because the world does not know of them.” “What do you mean?” he asked, sharply, and Josephine replied: “Nothing in particular; only you told me once that you had broken every commandment except the one ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ and that you might break that under strong provocation. Of course there are sins at your door not generally known. Suppose some one should be instrumental in bringing them or the worst of them to light?” “Then I might break the only commandment you say I have not broken,” he answered, and in the eyes bent so searchingly on Josephine’s face there was an evil, threatening look, before which she quailed.