fancy you would like something in the line of adventure; but my career
has not run in that direction, so I shall resort to less exciting fields,
and, I fear, also, a not very cheerful subject."

"Oh, never mind!" said she. "What you wish, so long as it is not
conventional and hackneyed. But I know you will not be prosy, so go on,
please."

"Well," I began, "once, in the hospital, I attended a man--Anson was his
name--who, when he thought he was going to die, confided to me his life's
secret. I liked the man; he was good-looking, amiable, but hopelessly
melancholy. He was dying as much from trouble as disease. No counsel
or encouragement had any effect upon him; he did, as I have seen so many
do--he resigned himself to the out-going tide. Well, for the secret.
He had been a felon. His crime had been committed through ministering to
his wife's vanity."

Here I paused. I felt Mrs. Falchion's eyes searching me.
I raised mine steadily to hers with an impersonal glance, and saw
that she had not changed colour in the least. But her eyes were busy.

I proceeded: "When he was disgraced she did not come near him.
When he went to her, after he was released" (here I thought it best to
depart from any close resemblance to Mrs. Falchion's own story), "and was
admitted to her, she treated him as an absolute stranger--as one who had
intruded, and might be violent. She said that she and her maid were
alone in the house, and hinted that he had come to disturb them. She
bade him go, or she must herself go. He called her by his own name, and
begged her, by the memory of their dead child, to speak kindly to him.
She said he was quite mistaken in her name, that she was Mrs. Glave, not