“My son, you use hard words; but I felt justified in questioning Salome when I learned how she had compromised herself by meeting that man,” Madame Winthrop returned, striving to recover her accustomed dignity, but looking both pale and miserable. “You do not suppose that I was going to allow her to disgrace her husband or his relatives by making such appointments if I could help it?” “Salome would never have done anything to compromise herself, to say nothing about any one else,” Dr. Winthrop sternly returned. “She was a true lady in every sense of the word and I had the utmost faith and confidence in her. My darling! my darling! oh! to think that I have lost you!” he burst forth in a voice of agony, as he wiped the great drops of perspiration from his brow and paced the floor like one wild. Madam and Evelyn felt appalled before such grief as this. In their determination to crush the gentle young wife they had not counted the full cost to their son and brother. So cold and hard of heart themselves, they could not realize the strength and depth of affection which he had for the girl whom he had married under such peculiar circumstances. “Who was this man? What do you know about him?” he demanded, when he could regain his self-control. “W. H. Brown, he calls himself. He seemed to know all about Salome’s past and was very anxious to learn where she lived.” “Does not that very anxiety prove to you that she was innocent of any wrong?” Dr. Winthrop cried—“that she refused to give him her address because she wanted to have nothing to do with him?” “No, it proves nothing to me but that she feared to have the man seen by us and her relations with him known to us,” madam responded coldly; “and when she found that we had learned of it, she flatly refused to answer any of our questions.” “Of course, mother; and you had no business to arraign her,” Dr. Winthrop indignantly rejoined. “I was the proper person for her to make such confessions to, and I have not a doubt that she would have confided the whole story to me upon my return.” Evelyn flushed guiltily at this, remembering the intercepted letter which she believed had contained an explanation of all that her brother could wish to learn. “I cannot understand why she should go to that wretched lodging-house instead of to the —— Hotel,” Dr. Winthrop said, in deep perplexity. “Did she know that you wrote to me accusing her of these improprieties?” “It would be natural that she should suppose I would,” said madam evasively. “Then I wonder she did not herself write and explain everything.” “Guilt never is desirous of explaining itself,” but his mother changed color slightly over the memory of letters which she herself had intercepted. “There is no question of guilt in the matter,” hotly returned her son; “if there is it rests with you two. I will believe no wrong of my darling. Ha!” with sudden thought; “did she know that you wrote to me about the escape of sewer-gas?”