"Yes, there is something wrong with 'Katharine,' as you call her--something very wrong. The bubble has burst--she has run away from her husband!" "Good God!" was Gordon's only answer; but the tone in which he uttered the exclamation angered Hester, and hardened her. "Yes," she went on, "there is no doubt about it; I have it on the best authority--Mr. Streightley's own. She has left her husband at a nice time, too--on a proper filial occasion--when her father's dead body is unburied." Gordon looked at her; and had she been wise she would have taken warning, she would have seen the dawning of a suspicion that she was different to that he had believed her, in that look, and paused before she flung into the gulf of a new and cruel passion the gem of all her treasures, whose pricelessness she knew well. But she was not wise, and she mistook the meaning of that look; she did not know that its sorrow and its misgiving were for her; she gave them to another, in her excited fancy, and she rushed upon her ruin. "You are deeply concerned, Gordon, are you not, and very anxious to learn all the particulars? You shall hear all I know." He was standing close to her as she spoke, and they were looking steadily at one another. "I am indeed, Hester," he replied mildly. "I trust there is some terrible mistake; tell me what you have heard." "There is no mistake; Mrs. Streightley has run away from her husband, leaving a letter for him, like the young ladies in the plays, who elope with a lover when 'Gardy' wants to marry them; only in this case there is no lover, I believe, or he is so very well hidden that nobody knows who he is." Still Gordon looked at her, but now there was relief in his face. "Thank God there is no infamy in this," he said; "though I deserve to be shot for having believed for a moment there could be infamy in any act of Katharine Guyon's." "Katharine _Streightley's_, you mean," said Hester with a sneer; "it strikes me there is some little infamy in her conduct as it is, though there may be no lover in the case." "No," said Gordon Frere, in a tone of manly decision, "there is no such thing. Misery and misunderstanding, possibly mischief, there may, there must be, but no infamy, no disgrace. I will never hear it said or hinted. This will be set right, I am convinced." "You are as sanguine as you are chivalrous, Gordon," said Hester; "but there is a little difficulty in setting such matters right, either in the private or the public sense. Mr. Streightley is very generous, we all know, and he gave his wife the love she did _not_ marry him for, as well as the money she _did_; but he may have his wrongs as well as his faults, and----"