It was nearly midnight when he reached the city, but a light was shining from the windows of that house in Madison Square, and Katy, who had never for a moment doubted his coming, was waiting for him. But not in the parlor; she was too sick now to go down there, and when she heard his ring and his voice in the hall asking for her, she bade Esther show him to her room. More and more perplexed, Morris ran up to the room where Katy lay, or rather crouched, upon the sofa, her eyes so wild and her face so white that, in great alarm, Morris took the cold hands she stretched feebly towards him, and bending over her said, “What is it, Katy? Has anything dreadful happened? and where is your husband?” At the mention of her husband Katy shivered, and rising from her crouching position, she pushed her hair back from her forehead and replied, “Oh, Morris! I am so wretched,—so full of pain! I have heard of something which took my life away. I am _not_ Wilford’s wife, for he had another before me,—a wife in Italy,—who is not dead! And _I_, oh Morris! what _am_ I? I knew you would know just what I was, and I sent for you to tell me and take me away from here, back to Silverton. Help me, Morris! I am choking! I am—yes—I am—going to faint!” It was the first time Katy had put the great horror in words addressed to another, and the act of doing so made it more appalling, and with a moan she sank back among the pillows of the couch, while Morris tried to comprehend the strange words he had heard, “I am not Wilford’s wife, for he had another before me,—a wife in Italy,—who is not dead.” Dr. Morris was thoroughly a man, and though much of his sinful nature had been subdued, there was enough left to make his heart rise and fall with great throbs of joy as he thought of Katy _free_, even though that freedom were bought at the expense of dire disgrace to others, and of misery to her. But only for a moment did he feel thus—only till he knelt beside the pallid face with the dark rings beneath the eyes, and saw the faint, quivering motion around the lips, which told that she was not wholly unconscious. “My poor little wounded bird,” he said, as pityingly as if he had been her father, while much as a father might kiss his suffering child, he kissed the forehead and the eyelids where the tears began to gather. Katy was not insensible, and the name by which he called her, with the kisses that he gave, thawed the ice around her heart and brought a flood of tears, which Morris wiped away, lifting her gently up and pillowing her hot head upon his arm, while she moaned like a weary child. “It rests me so just to see you, Morris. May I go back with you, as your housekeeper, instead of Mrs. Hull;—that is, if I am not his wife? The world might despise me, but you would know I was not to blame. I should go nowhere but to the farm-house, to church, and baby’s grave. Poor baby! I am glad God gave her to me, even if I am not Wilford’s wife; and I am glad now that she died.”