Dr. Winthrop’s lip curled with scorn as he thought how his sister had played the spy upon his pure-minded, innocent wife. How utterly contemptible it seemed to him, and how simple the circumstances of the meeting, although, as his mother had represented it, there had seemed to be something perplexing and suspicious connected with it. “I blame myself very much, Salome, for leaving you behind when I was called abroad to my father,” he said regretfully. “If I had only listened to your pleadings and taken you with me, I could have saved you all these wretched experiences. But I feared the voyage for you in the dead of winter, for you were far from strong. I knew if you took cold and were ill again it would go hard with you; so, though it nearly unmanned me to refuse you and leave you, I believed it was the only right thing for me to do.” “I know you acted as you thought best, True, and I never thought of blaming you,” Salome answered. “The only thing that I rebelled against and questioned, was your apparently harsh judgment of me in sending me from your home, as if you regretted having ever brought me there; but now, knowing that you never received my letter, and understanding why you sent me away, I can see that I misjudged you.” “It is not strange at all,” Dr. Winthrop said, feeling that she had been very lenient in her estimate of his apparent injustice. Then he added, with some curiosity: “How do you account, Salome, for the fact that Miss Rochester has been masquerading under your name and position.”