"There is no mischief in your dropped stitch; I shall not pick it up. I know that Mrs. Orme's husband is in Europe, and I was assured that motives of a personal character induced her to make certain professional engagements in England and upon the Continent. I am not enthusiastic, and rarely venture prophecies, but I shall be much disappointed if her Richelieu tactics do not finally triumph." "Can you tell me why she does not openly bring suit against her husband for bigamy?" "Simply because she has been informed that the policy of the defence would be to at once attack her reputation, which she seems to guard with almost morbid sensitiveness on account of her daughter. She has been warned of the dangerous consequences of a suit, but if forced to extremities will hazard it; hence I bide my time." He threw back his lordly head, and his brilliant eyes seemed to dilate, as though the suggestion of the suit stirred his pulse, as the breath of carnage and the din of distant battle that of the war-horse, panting for the onward dash. A species of human petrel,--a juridic _Procellaria Pelagica_ whose _habitat_ was the court-house,--Erle Palma lived amid the ceaseless surges of litigation, watching the signs of rising tempests in human hearts, plunging in defiant exultation where the billows rode highest, never so elated as when borne triumphantly upon the towering crest of some conquering wave of legal _finesse_, or impassioned invective, and rarely saddened in the flush of victory by the pale spectres of strangled hope, fortune, or reputation which float in the _debris_ of the wrecks that almost every day drift mournfully away from the precincts of courts of justice. The striking of the clock caused him to draw out his watch and compare the time. "I believe the regular train does not leave V---- until night, but the conductor told me I might catch an excursion train bound south, and due here about half-past one o'clock. It is necessary for me to return with as little delay as possible, and after I have spoken to Regina I must hasten to the depot You will find my address pencilled on the card, and I presume Mrs. Orme has given you hers. Should you desire to confer with me at any time relative to the child, I shall promptly respond to your letters, but have no leisure to spend in looking after her. The semiannual remittance shall not be neglected, and Regina has a package for you containing money for contingent expenses." They entered the hall, and found the little stranger sitting alone on the lowest step of the stairway, where Mrs. Lindsay had left her, while she went to prepare luncheon for the travellers. She was very quiet, bore no visible traces of tears, but the tender lips wore a piteously sad expression of heroically repressed grief, and the purlish shadows under her solemn blue eyes rendered them more than ever--pleadingly beautiful.