Poor Mrs. Lennox understood this perfectly, but she was too much afraid of the great lady to venture a reply, and a tear rolled down her cheek as she wet the napkin for Katy’s head, and wished she had back again the daughter whose family the Camerons despised. The atmosphere of Madison Square did not suit Mrs. Lennox, especially when, as the days went by and Katy began to amend, troops of gay ladies called, mistaking her for the nurse, and staring a little curiously when told she was Mrs. Cameron’s mother. Of course Wilford chafed and fretted at what he could not help, making himself so generally disagreeable that Helen at last suggested returning home. There was a faint remonstrance on his part, but Helen did not waver in her decision, and the next day was fixed upon for her departure. “You don’t know how I dread your going, or how wretched I shall be without you,” Katy said, when for a few moments they were alone. “Everything which once made me happy has been removed or changed. Baby is dead, and Wilford, oh! Helen, I sometimes wish I had not heard of Genevra, for I am afraid it can never be with us as it was once; I have not the same trust in him, and he seems so changed.” As well as she could, Helen comforted her sister, and commending her to One who would care for her far more than earthly friends could do, she bade her good-bye, and with her mother went back to Silverton. CHAPTER XXXVIII. DOMESTIC TROUBLES. Wilford was in a most unhappy frame of mind. He had been humbled to the very dust, and it was Katy who had done it—Katy, towards whom his heart kept hardening as he thought over all the past. What right had she to go to his mother’s after having once declined; or, being there, what right had she to listen and thus learn the secret he would almost have died to keep; or, having learned it, why need she have been so much excited, and sent for _Dr. Grant_ to tell her if she were really a wife, and if not to take her away? That was the point which hurt him most, for added to it was the galling fact that Morris Grant loved his wife, and was undoubtedly more worthy of her than himself. He had said that he forgave Morris, and at the time he said it he fancied he did, but as the days went by, and thought was all the busier from the moody silence he maintained, there gradually came to life a feeling of hatred for the man whose name he could not hear without a frown, while he watched Katy closely to detect, if possible, some sign by which he should know that Morris’s love was reciprocated. But Katy was innocence itself, and tried so hard to do her duty as a wife, going often to the Friend of whom Helen had told her, and finding there the grace which helped her bear what otherwise she could not have borne and lived. The entire history of her life during that wretched winter was never told save as it was written on her face, which was a volume in itself of meek and patient suffering.