Wilford’s leaving home so suddenly to join the army, could not fail, even in New York, to cause some excitement, especially in his own immediate circle of acquaintance, and for several days the matter was discussed in all its phases, and every possible opinion and conjecture offered, as to the cause of his strange freak. They could not believe in domestic troubles when they saw how his family clung to and defended Katy from the least approach of censure, Juno taking up her abode with her “afflicted sister,” Mrs. Cameron driving round each day to see her; Bell always speaking of her with genuine affection, while the father clung to her like a hero, the quartette forming a barrier across which the shafts of scandal could not reach. CHAPTER XXXIX. WHAT FOLLOWED. When Wilford left Katy so abruptly he had no definite purpose in his mind. He was very sore with the remembrance of all that had passed since baby’s death, and very angry at his wife, who he believed preferred another to himself, or who would have done so had she known in time what she did now. Like most angry people, he forgot wherein he had been in fault, but charged it all to Katy as he went down Broadway that spring morning, finding on his table a letter from an old classmate, who was then in Washington getting up a company, and who wrote urging his friend to join him at once, and offering him the rank of First Lieutenant. Here was a temptation,—here an opportunity to revenge himself on Katy, against whom he wrote a sad list of errors, making it sadder by brooding over and magnifying it until he reached a point from which he would not swerve. “I shall do it,” he said, and his lips were pressed firmly together, as in his private office he sat revolving the past, and then turning to the future, opening so darkly before him, and making him shudder as he thought of what it might bring. “I will spare Katy as much as possible,” he said, “for hers is a different nature from Genevra’s. She cannot bear as well,” and a bitter groan broke the silence of the room as Katy came up before him just as she had looked that very morning standing by the window, with tears in her eyes, and a wistful, sorry look on her white face.