I shouldn't wonder," he added, with a laugh, "although she always declares she isn't one of those 'doting, idiotic mothers,' that she found it a little dull without the boy, for all she thought it was better for ME to take him somewhere for a change of air." The situation was becoming more difficult for Mrs.Horncastle than she had conceived.

There had been a certain excitement in its first direct appeal to her tact and courage, and even, she believed, an unselfish desire to save the relations between husband and wife if she could.

But she had not calculated upon his unconscious revelations, nor upon their effect upon herself.

She had concluded to believe that Kitty had, in a moment of folly, lent herself to this hare-brained escapade, but it now might be possible that it had been deliberately planned.

Kitty had sent her husband and child away three weeks before.