"I never resent your keeping your affairs from me, why should you object to my keeping mine from you?" she answered coolly. "Good Lord, Carrie, you look at me as if you'd filed papers for divorce! And when did the Mosely will become one of your affairs, I'd like to know?" She declined to tell him that. She poked her foot about under the table with the absent-minded stare a woman always has when she is trying to find the electric bell with her extremities. She found it and pressed all the current on, so that the maid came with an injured put-upon air to clear the table. Carter continued to regard his wife as if she had become a phenomenon, and as if he was entirely ignorant of the laws which had exalted her into the unknown. When the servant disappeared with the tray of indignantly rattling dishes he began again. "Look here, Carrie, if there's any news about the disposition of that woman's estate, I ought to have it for the _Signal_. We go to press to-morrow." "You'll get all the news you are entitled to have in time to publish this week, Magnis, and through the proper channels." Three doors farther down the avenue Selah Adams sat upon the front veranda, looking like the vestal virgin of the moon. She had taken the precaution to enter the house through the back door when she returned with the other women. The Colonel was fuming in the library. She could hear him through the open door as she fled noiselessly up the staircase. "Not a light in the house, by Jove! First time in forty years I've come home to a darkened house. No candle in the window to guide an old man's wandering feet, nobody to greet me, no slippers--no nothing!" he moaned. And Selah, leaning over the banisters above, could hear him stumbling over the chairs. She knew what that meant. The Colonel regarded all chairs as his mortal enemies when he was in a certain condition. She heard the crash of the big Morris chair as it struck the wall, and feet attacking it furiously. Then the Colonel lumbered out into the hall. "Hey, there! Tom! Becky! Where's everybody? By Gad! if somebody don't come, I'll--I'll----" "What is it, father?" came Selah's voice, tinkling like ice in a glass. "Selah! whatsh thish mean?" he roared. "What does what mean, father?" "No light! I've just been asshaulted in my own house!" he shouted. "Assaulted?" she giggled, turning the switch. The hall below was instantly flooded with light. She beheld the Colonel leaning against the newel post, looking up but not seeing her. He was lifting first one foot and then the other and feeling them tenderly with his hands. "Yesh! thas what I shaid! That Morris chair met me at the door and barked every shin I've got. Get out of here!" he roared at the two servants who had entered from the kitchen. "Selah, where've you been?" "I'm up here, father. I didn't know it was so late. I'll be down in a minute." To lie is not the nature of women, but it is often their necessity.