In a stately drawing room of an ideal Kentucky home are Eleanor Carleton
and Egbert Mason, once more face to face.

"Oh, my love," he moaned, bending almost reverently before her, "what a
mistake, I knew it all when too late. The letters were all found when
that unhappy woman was sent to the asylum. Did you think I could change?
'Forget thee dear?'" he quoted unconsciously--he had said the lines so
often;

"God knows I would not if I could:
For sweeter far has been to me the pain
Of love unsatisfied, than all the vain
And ill spent years I lived before we met."


Still she stood, gravely looking at him, her maturing beauty made the
fairer by the sable gown she wore.

"Forgive me," then she spoke. "I thought you knew. I have been Leslie
Walcott's wife these four months."

As he sat beside his solitary hearth there was a fumbling outside the
door. He opened to admit old Ailsie, now crippled with rheumatic pains.

"I know'd dat was you. Marse Doctor, 'n I follered yer, I want to tell
yer:--Mistress 'splained all 'bout dat 'fore she died. Dey wan't nothin'
wrong. Her an' her ma was 'feared to let old Master know she hed run
'way an' married Marse Henry. He said he wan't gwine ter will her nary
cent. So mistess and her sister, Miss Ellen, arter while, dey fotch her
up to de springs. Den ole master he died sudden like, an' Marse Henry,