Francisco. "I'll not lose a moment." And he left the room as if
charging the enemy.

"Good. Will the rest of you promise?"

"Of course we'll promise."

But alas, wives have means of extracting secrets when their
suspicions are alert and clamoring that no husband has the wit to
elude, man being too ingenuous to follow the circumlocutory methods
of the subtler sex. Not that there was ever anything subtle about
Mrs. Abbott's methods. Mr. Abbott had a perpetual catarrh and it had
long since weakened his fibre. It was commonly believed that when
Mrs. Abbott, her large bulk arrayed in a red flannel nightgown, sat
up in the connubial bed and threatened to pour hot mustard up his
nose unless he opened his sluices of information he ingloriously
succumbed.

At all events, how or wherefore, Travers' prediction was fulfilled,
although he shiveringly held his own tongue. The story was all over
town not in a week but in three days. But of this Madeleine knew
nothing. The doctor, who feared typhoid fever, ordered her to keep
quiet and see no one until he discovered what was the matter with
her. Her return to Society and Masters' to San Francisco coincided,
but at least her little world knew that Dr. Talbot had been
responsible for her retirement. It awaited future developments with a
painful and a pleasurable interest.