"I think he's been pointed out to me somewhere," she said, thoughtfully;
"he's a tall, dark, dissipated-looking man."

"Nothing of the kind," laughed her husband. "He's middle-sized and as
blond as your cousin Joe, only he's got a long yellow moustache, and
has a quick, abrupt way of talking. He isn't at all fancy-looking; you'd
take him for an energetic business man or a doctor, if you didn't know
him. So you see, Joan, this correct little wife of mine has been a
little, just a little, prejudiced."

He drew her again gently backwards and nearer his seat, but she caught
his wrists in her slim hands, and rising from the chair at the same
moment, dexterously slipped from his embrace with her back towards him.
"I do not know why I should be unprejudiced by anything you've told me,"
she said, sharply closing the book of sermons, and, with her back still
to her husband, reinstating it formally in its place on the cabinet.
"It's probably one of his many scandalous pursuits of defenceless and
believing women, and he, no doubt, goes off to Boston, laughing at you
for thinking him in earnest; and as ready to tell his story to anybody
else and boast of his double deceit." Her voice had a touch of human
asperity in it now, which he had never before noticed, but recognizing,
as he thought, the human cause, it was far from exciting his
displeasure.

"Wrong again, Joan; he's waiting here at the Independence House for me
to see him to-morrow," he returned, cheerfully. "And I believe him so
much in earnest that I would be ready to swear that not another person
will ever know the story but you and I and he. No, it is a real thing
with him; he's dead in love, and it's your duty as a Christian to help