I am afraid that Mrs. Rylands did not offer all her thoughts. Ever
since Mr. Hamlin's departure she had been uneasy and excited, sometimes
falling into fits of dejection, and again lighting up into hysterical
levity; at other times carefully examining her wardrobe, and then with a
sudden impulse rushing downstairs again to give orders for her husband's
supper, and to make the extraordinary changes in the sitting-room
already noted. Only a few moments before he arrived, she had covertly
brought down a piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken,
with a little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed
behind the already dismantled vase on the chimney.

"I reckoned you had company, Ellen," he said gravely, kissing her.

"No," she said quickly. "That is," she stopped with a sudden surge of
color in her face that startled her, "there was--a man--here, in the
kitchen--who had a lame horse, and who wanted to get a fresh one. But
he went away an hour ago. And he wasn't in this room--at least, after it
was fixed up. So I've had no company."

She felt herself again blushing at having blushed, and a little
terrified. There was no reason for it. But for Jack's warning, she would
have been quite ready to tell her husband all. She had never blushed
before him over her past life; why she should now blush over seeing
Jack, of all people! made her utter a little hysterical laugh. I am
afraid that this experienced little woman took it for granted that her
husband knew that if Jack or any man had been there as a clandestine
lover, she would not have blushed at all. Yet with all her experience,
she did not know that she had blushed simply because it was to Jack that
she had confessed that she loved the man before her. Her husband noted