But Katharine’s case just now was very much worse than the common. It is not necessary to recapitulate the evidence against John’s soberness on that memorable Thursday. It might have ruined the reputation of a Father of the Church. Up to one o’clock on the following day no one but Mrs. Ralston and Doctor Routh were aware that there was anything whatsoever to be said on the other side of the question. So far as Katharine or any one else could fairly judge, John had been through one of the most outrageous and complete sprees of which New York society had heard for a long time. A certain number of people knew that he had practically fought Hamilton Bright in the hall of his club, and had undoubtedly tripped him up and thrown him. Katharine, naturally enough, supposed that every one knew it, and in spite of Bright’s reassuring words on the previous night, she fully expected that John would have to withdraw from the club in question. Even she, girl as she was, knew that this was a sort of public disgrace. There was no other word for it. The man she loved, and to whom she had been secretly married, had publicly disgraced himself on the very day of the marriage, had been tipsy in the club, had been seen drunk in the streets, had been in a light with a professional boxer, and had been incapable of getting home alone--much more of going to meet his wife at the Assembly ball. If he had done such things on their wedding day, what might he not do hereafter? The question was a natural one. Katharine had bound herself to a hopeless drunkard. She had heard of such cases, unfortunately, though they have become rare enough in society, and she knew what it all meant. There would be years of a wretched existence, of a perfectly hopeless attempt to cure him. She had heard her father tell such stories, for Alexander Junior was not a peaceable abstainer like Griggs and Crowdie. He was not an abstainer at all--he was a man of ferocious moderation. She remembered painful details about the drunkard’s children. Then there was a story of a blow--and then a separation--a wife who, for her child’s sake, would not go to another State and be divorced--and the going back to the father’s house to live, while the husband sank from bad to worse, and his acquaintances avoided him in the street, till he had been seen hanging about low liquor saloons and telling drunken loafers the story of his married life--speaking to them of the pure and suffering woman who was still his lawful wife--and laughing about it. Alexander had told it all, as a wholesome lesson to his household, which, by the way, consisted of his aged father, his wife, and his two daughters, none of whom, one might have thought, could ever stand in need of such lessons. Charlotte had laughed then, and Katharine had been disgusted. Mrs. Lauderdale’s perfectly classical face had expressed nothing, for she had been thinking of something else, and the old philanthropist had made some remarks about the close connection