They were not as happy in the new home as she had expected to be, but the fault did not lie with Katy. She performed her part and more, taking upon her young shoulders the whole of the burden which her husband should have helped her to bear. The easy, indolent life Wilford had led so long as a petted son of a partial mother unfitted him for care, and he was as much a boarder in his own home as he had even been in the hotels in Paris, thoughtlessly requiring of Katy more than he should have required, so that Bell was not far from right when in her journal she described her sister-in-law as “a little servant whose feet were never supposed to be tired, and whose wishes were never consulted.” It is true Bell had put it rather strongly, but the spirit of what she said was right, Wilford seldom considering Katy, or allowing her wishes to interfere with his own plans; while accustomed to every possible attention from his mother, he exacted the same from his wife, whose life was not one of unmixed happiness, notwithstanding that every letter home bore assurances to the contrary. CHAPTER XVIII. MARIAN HAZELTON. The last days of June had come, and Wilford was beginning to make arrangements for removing Katy from the city before the warmer weather. To this he had been urged by Mark Ray’s remarking that Katy was not looking as well as when he first saw her, one year ago. “She has grown thin and pale,” he said. “Had Wilford remarked it?” Wilford had not. She complained much of headache, but that was only natural. Still he wrote to the Mountain House that afternoon to secure rooms for himself and wife, and then at an earlier hour than usual went home to tell her of the arrangement. Katy was out shopping, Esther said, and had not yet returned, adding, “There is a note for her up stairs, left by a woman who I guess came for work.” That a woman should come for work was not strange, but that she should leave a note seemed rather too familiar; and when on going to the library he saw it upon the table, he took it in his hand and examined the superscription closely, holding it up to the light and forgetting to open it in his perplexity and the train of thought it awakened. “They are singularly alike,” he said, and still holding the note in his hand he opened a drawer of his writing desk, which was always kept locked, and took from it a _picture_ and a bit of soiled paper, on which was written, “I am _not_ guilty, Wilford, and God will never forgive the wrong you have done to me.” There was no name or date, but Wilford knew whose hand had penned those lines, and he sat comparing them with the “Mrs. Wilford Cameron” which the strange woman had written. Then opening the note, he read that, having returned to New York, and wishing employment either as seamstress or dressmaker, Marian Hazelton had ventured to call upon Mrs. Cameron, remembering her promise to give her work if she should desire it.