Without looking up he answered her: “Oh, Bee, I wish I were dead! Sit down beside me and listen to all I have to tell.” She sat down beside him, and listened intently to the story Everard told her in full, concealing nothing where he was concerned, but shielding Josephine as far as was possible. Rosamond’s noble sacrifice of her hair was explained, and her mistake about Joe Fleming, who in her imagination still existed somewhere in whiskers and tall boots, and was the evil genius of Everard’s life. Here Beatrice laughed merrily once, then questioned Everard rapidly with regard to every particular of his marriage, and the family, and the girl. Where was she now and what was she like? “You have seen the picture, Bee,” he said. “I showed it to you that day I broke my head, two years ago, and you said she looked as if she might wear cotton lace, while mother, to whom I showed it, too, hinted at dollar jewelry, and Rossie said she looked as if she were a sham.” Here Everard laughed himself, but there was more of bitterness than mirth in it, and Beatrice laughed, too, as she said: “That was rather hard;—cotton lace, dollar jewelry, and a sham, though, after all, Rossie’s criticism was really of the most consequence, if true; perhaps it is not. Have you her picture now?” He passed it to her, and with a shrewd woman’s intuition, quickened by actual knowledge, Beatrice felt that it was true, and her first womanly instinct was to help and comfort this man who had brought his secret to her. “Ned,” she said to him, and the name, now so seldom used, took her back to the days when she first came from France and played and quarreled with him. It made her altogether his sister, and as such she spoke. “Ned, I am so sorry for you; sorrier than I can express, and I want to help you some way, and I think it must be through Josephine. She is your wife, and by your own showing you were quite as much in fault as she.” “Yes, quite,” and Everard shivered a little, for he guessed what was coming. “Well, then,” Beatrice went on, “ought you not to make the best of it? You took her for better or worse, knowing what you were doing. You loved her then. Can you not do so again? Is it not your duty to try?” “Oh, Bee, you do not know, you do not understand. She is not like you, nor Rossie, nor mother.” “Well, try to make her like us, then,” Beatrice replied. “If her surroundings are not such as please you, remove her from them at once. Recognize her as your wife. Bring her home to Forrest House and I will stand her friend to the death.”