He whispered the last name, and with a shriek the lady fainted. Mr. Cameron would not summon a servant; and as there was no water in the room, he walked to the window, and lifting the sash scraped from the sill a handful of the light spring snow which had been falling since morning. With this he brought his wife back to consciousness, and then marked out her future course. “I know what is in your mind,” he said; “people _will_ talk about Wilford’s going off so suddenly, and you would like to have all the blame rest on Katy; but, madam, hear me: Just so sure as through your means one breath of suspicion falls on her, I’ll _bla-at_ out the whole story of Genevra. Then see who is censured. On the other hand, if you hold your tongue, and make Juno hold hers, and stick to Katy through thick and thin, acting as if you would like to swallow her whole, I’ll say nothing of this Genevra. Is it a bargain?” “Yes,” came faintly from the sofa cushions, where Mrs. Cameron had buried her face, sobbing in a confused, frightened way, and after a few moments asking to see Katy, whom she kissed and caressed with unwonted tenderness, telling her Wilford would come back, and adding, that in any event no one could or should blame her. “Wilford was wrong to deceive you about Genevra. I was wrong to let him; but we will have no more concealments. You think she is living still—that she is Marian Hazelton?” and Mrs. Cameron smoothed Katy’s hair as she talked, trying to be motherly and kind, while her heart beat more painfully at thoughts of a Genevra living, than it ever had at thoughts of a Genevra dead. She did not doubt the story, although it seemed so strange, and it made her faint as she wondered if the world would ever know, and what it would say if it did. That her husband would tell, if she failed in a single point, she was sure; but she would not fail. She would swear Katy was innocent of everything, if necessary, while Juno and Bell should swear too. Of course, they must know, and she should tell them that very night, she said to herself; and hence it was that in the gossip which followed Wilford’s disappearance, not a word was breathed against Katy, whose cause the family espoused so warmly,—Bell and the father because they really loved and pitied her, and Mrs. Cameron and Juno because it saved them from the disgrace which would have fallen on Wilford, had the fashionable world known then of Genevra.