"Did you tell him not to come?" "Well, yes." Mrs. Varian sighed. "It would have been better not," she said. Missy turned her face to the fire, which was beginning to blaze, and stretched out her hands to it. "Well, mamma," she said a little querulously, after several moments of silence, "I suppose you don't think that I care anything about St. John's trouble. I should think you might tell me without being asked to." "O my child!" exclaimed her mother. "Forgive me. I have been so absorbed in him." "O, I know that," retorted Missy, crying a little. "That isn't what I want to know." "It won't take long to tell you. The girl to whom he was engaged, has fled from him and from her mother, and last night was married privately to a man for whom, it seems, she has long had a passion." "Then why did she ever engage herself to St. John?" cried Missy, turning her pale and excited face towards her mother. "I suppose it was the mother's work. The mother must be unscrupulous and daring. No doubt she worked hard for such a prize as St. John, and she found him easy prey, poor boy. Easier to manage than her daughter, whose passions are strong, and whose will is undisciplined. The girl could not conquer the thought of the old lover, though she had dissembled cruelly. I think she is but little to be preferred to her mother, inasmuch as her intention was the same; she meant to sacrifice St. John, and to satisfy her ambition. Only at the last moment, her passion conquered, and she broke faith both with her mother and him. O Missy, what wicked, wicked lives! Does it seem possible that there can be such women living?" "I thank them from the bottom of my heart," said Missy, from between her set teeth. "Yes," said her mother with a sigh. "It is right to feel that, I know. But oh, my boy; it is so hard to see him suffer. To have loved so, and been so duped. And he cannot, in his disgust and revulsion, conquer his great love for her. He is writhing in such pangs of jealousy. Think, last night this time he was dreaming happy dreams about her, as foolish and as fond as boy could be. To-night, she is in the arms of another--separated from him forever--leaving him with mockery and coldness, without a word of penitence or supplication. She flung him off as if she had disdained and loathed him." "How did it come out--how did he hear it first?"