Durgan was waiting for some instructions concerning certain invalid requisites. His cousins, the Durgan Blounts, were returning to Baltimore for the winter, and Durgan had undertaken that they should make the purchases. No sooner had Alden spoken than Miss Claxton left her writing desk, came swiftly, and sat down beside him. "There is something that I am waiting to tell you," she said. Her voice was very gentle. "I have not made any explanation, either, to Mr. Durgan, for I wouldn't till I saw you; but he ought to know, for Mrs. Durgan's sake." Durgan had moved, but, at her command, remained. There was a little silence, and after she began he was quite sure she had forgotten his presence. She took Alden's passive hand in hers. "Herbert! my father has come back to us. No, dear; do not start like that. He is still alive. That is my long secret, which I could not have kept from you for anyone's sake but his." Alden said not a word. He sat erect, as if someone had struck him. "Oh," she cried, with tears in her voice, "the fate that came to him that terrible morning was worse than death, and now he has been carried back to us paralyzed. Have patience with me, and I will tell you all that happened." The little lawyer, as if suddenly moved by some electric force, was for bounding from his seat, every nerve quivering with the sting of his own mortification and the shock of surprise. It was the strength of her will that controlled him. "I must tell you from the beginning--it is the only way. Upon the morning that that crime was committed in our house, a boy came with a note from Mr. Beardsley. It made my father very angry. He told me that Beardsley was coming on the heels of his messenger upon an impertinent errand. What he said was that Beardsley was bent upon dictating the terms of his friendship with Mrs. Durgan, whom he had only lately met. "There was something the maids had to do that afternoon, and I sent them then in the morning, for I could not bear that anyone should see such a person in our house, or see my father so angry. My poor step-mother had not risen from bed. When Beardsley came he went upstairs to my father's sitting-room. The door was shut, but from what my father told me afterwards, I know pretty well what happened." "Afterwards!" repeated Alden; "afterwards! Hermione?"