"_Forgery!_ William arrested! It’s false!" shrieked Mrs. Reeves, and the salts which Mrs. Bartow had used so vigorously a little time before changed hands, while Jessie passed her arm around the lady to keep her from falling to the floor. "It’s false. He never forged. Why should he? Isn’t he rich, and a Bellenger?" she kept repeating, until at last Mr. Graham answered: "It is too true, my dear madam, that for some time past Mr. Bellenger has been engaged in a systematic course of forging, managing always to escape detection, until now, it has been clearly proved against him, and he is in the hands of the law." There was no reason why Mrs. Reeves, at this point, should think of Walter, but she did, and fancying that her auditors might possibly be drawing comparisons between the two cousins she said: "It’s the _Marshall_ blood with which he is tainted." "Marshall blood!" repeated Jessie, indignantly. "I’d like to know by what chemical process you have mingled the Marshall blood with William Bellenger’s." Mrs. Reeves could not explain. She only knew that she was completely overwhelmed with surprise and mortification, and she seemed so bewildered and helpless that Mr. Graham ordered his carriage, and sent her to No.—, whither the sad news had preceded her, and where Charlotte lay fainting and moaning in the midst of her bridal finery, which would never be worn. She had noticed William’s absence from the house for the last twenty-four hours, and was wondering at it, when her father, roused by the shock from his usual state of quiet passiveness, rushed in, telling her in thunder tones that her affianced husband had been guilty of forging Graham & Marshall’s name, not once, not twice, but many times, until at last he was detected and under arrest. "He’ll go to State prison, girl—do you hear? To State prison! Why don’t you speak, and not sit staring at me with that milky face?" Poor Charlotte could not speak, but she fainted and fell at the feet of her father, who became himself at once, and bending kindly over her brought her back to life. It was not that Charlotte loved William so very much. It was rather her pride which was wounded, and she moaned and wept until her grandmother came, and with her lamentations and reproaches, so wholly out-did all Charlotte had done, that the latter grew suddenly calm, and without a word or a tear, sat motionless, while the old lady raved on, one moment talking as if they were all going to prison together, and the next giving Charlotte most uncomfortable squeezes to think she was not the wife of a forger after all. ———— The _three Thayers_ were for the time forgotten, and when at Charlotte’s request Jessie came to see her, accompanied by her grandmother, Mrs. Reeves kissed the latter affectionately, whispering in her ear: "We’ll not mind the past, for the present has enough of trouble and disgrace."