But as I am here, if you will allow me, I will say a word to you first.

In all matters there is nothing so good as being explicit.' She looked at him as though she was altogether afraid of him.

And indeed she was.

Her husband's opinion of the young man had been very bad five years ago,--and she had not heard that it had been altered since.

Young men who went out to the colonies because they were ruined, were, to her thinking, the worst among the bad,--men who drank and gambled and indulged in strange lives, mere castaways, the adopted of Satan.