It is extremely comforting, however, to be able to assure our readers that no dire results followed this act, which we must believe to have been quite unpremeditated on the part of Mr. Wescott. The Governor having been shown upstairs by Mary Wescott to wash, he repaired hastily to his own room, from whence he emerged almost simultaneously with his honored guest, his appearance entirely conventional and his native gallantry unimpaired. But although the dinner was a complete success from every point of view, although upon his departure the Governor assured his hostess in most lavish terms of his deep regard for her husband, the ensuing legislative season was an anxious one for Mrs. Wescott. Was it not possible, nay even probable, that habit might assert itself even in the State capital? This fear so plucked at her that she was tormented by frequent nightmares, in the worst of which she saw her husband on a freezing winter day emerge from behind the white marble pillars of the government building, descend the long flight of steps, and walk through the city streets to his Augusta hotel, his collar and tie in his hand. Her cries awoke Cynthia in the next room, but to her startled questions her mother confessed only vaguely to having seen in her sleep a most terrifying thing. Nor were Cynthia’s far more insistent morning queries productive of anything more definite. Relief came in the shape of a legislator and friend from a neighboring town, who, upon meeting Mrs. Wescott at a county convention of the church, remarked in the course of conversation that she would never know her husband in the ultra-dignified gentleman who lent tone to the State Senate. Circumspect as were his words and uncompromising as was his manner, Mrs. Wescott could only infer that he meant to allay her fears, and the sense of freedom which she henceforth experienced, in spite of her embarrassment at the time of the conversation, was immeasurable.