"Now what shall be done!" Mrs. Thorne exclaimed tragically.

"I know what _I_ shall do!" Mr. Thorne wrapped his toga around him with
an air of duty done. But a husband cannot escape so easily as that. His
ministering angel sat beside his bed for half an hour longer, brooding
aloud over the day's disaster, with a rigid eye upon the question of
personal accountability.

"If you had not stopped me, Henry, when I tried to confess about my letter!
There's no time for the truth like the present."

"My dear, when a person is telling a story you don't want to interrupt with
quibbles of conscience; if it made it any easier for her to think us a
little better than we are, why rob her of the delusion?"

"I shall have to rob her of it to-morrow. To think of my sitting there, a
whited sepulchre, and being called generous and forbearing and merciful,
with that letter lying on my desk all the time!"

"It would be lying there still except for an accident. She will see how you
feel about it. Give her something to forgive in you. Depend upon it, she'll
rise to the occasion."

* * * * *

As the mother passed her guest's room next morning she paused and looked
remorsefully at the closed door.

"I ought to have told her that we never shut our doors. She must be