“Why, my darling,” protested Harry, a little irritably, “you don’t want to make me miserable thinking of you as here by yourself. Please be reasonable and don’t sit up for me. Leave me free to come home when I want.” “Very well, Harry,” acceded Margaret, dutifully, “if you insist I won’t wait for your return.” Harry took the charming face in his hands, and kissed each eyelid, and then the lips. “I don’t deserve such an angel,” he asserted, his conscience pricking him, “and— Oh, hang Parmlee!” he growled, as her eyes, a little misty, looked up into his own. However, she belonged to him, and there were plenty of evenings, and—well— “Good-night, my treasure,” he ended. ⁂ Margaret remained standing where Harry had left her until she heard the front door close; then she collapsed on the sofa and softly sobbed her sense of desertion and grief into the pillow. The warnings of her family and friends recurred to her, and added to the pain of the moment a direful dread of the future. Not knowing that most bachelors are regular club men merely because it is the nearest approach to home life they can attain, she dwelt on his having been apparently wedded to these comforters of men, before marriage, and inferred a return to his former daily frequenting of them. Her grief was keen enough to prevent her from noticing that the front door was presently opened, and not till she heard a faint cough in the room did she raise her head from the pillow. It was to find a servant with his back turned to the sofa, occupied, apparently, in setting a chair in a position entirely unsuited to it,—a proceeding he made far more noisy than became a well-trained butler, and which he accompanied with two more coughs. Hurriedly wiping her eyes, Margaret asked, “What is it, Craig?” With his eyes carefully focussed to see everything but his mistress’s face, the man came forward and held out his tray. Almost mechanically she took the card upon it, and after a mere glance she directed,—“Say that Mrs. Tyler is not receiving this evening, and begs to be excused.”