Family Pride

Yes. Phillips remembered how sick Esther said she looked when she came home from his father's, where she spent the night.

"Oh, yes; she stayed at my father's then. It was very proper she should," Wilford replied, recollecting himself, and trying to appear natural, so that Phillips would not suspect him of any special purpose in questioning her.

If Katy spent the night at his father's then Tom's statement was not true, and dismissing Phillips he hastened to his mother, to whom he put the question: "Did Katy stay here a night while I was gone, the night but one after that dinner when she heard of Genevra, I mean?"

"Why, no," Mrs. Cameron replied, in some surprise. "Katy has not stayed here since last October, just after she came from Silverton, and you were in Detroit. Why do you ask? What is the matter? What do you fear?"

Wilford would not tell his mother what he feared, but waived her question by bidding her repeat what she could remember of the day when she was first summoned to Katy, and to tell him also who was there.

"Dr. Grant was there, and Dr. Craig," she said. "The former, as I understood from Esther, had just come to the city and called on Katy, finding her so ill that he sent for me immediately."

"And you do not know that Katy was away from home at all?" was Wilford's next inquiry, to which his mother replied: "Esther spoke of her looking very sick when she came in, from which I inferred she had been driving or shopping, but she was not here, sure."

Esther, it would seem, was the only one who could throw light upon the mystery, and as by this time the jealous man did not care whom he questioned, he left his mother without a word of explanation, and hurried home, where he found Esther, and in a voice which made her tremble, bade her answer his questions truthfully, without the slightest attempt at evasion.

"Yes, sir," Esther replied, and Wilford continued: "Where was your mistress the night before Dr. Grant came here, and she was so very sick?"

"I don't know, sir. I had the impression that she at your mother's. Wasn't she there?" and Esther looked very innocent, while Wilford replied: "It is your business to answer questions, not to ask them. Tell me then the particulars of her going away, and what she said."

As nearly as she could remember Esther repeated what had passed between herself and Katy that morning, but her manner was such as to convince Wilford she was keeping back something, and in a paroxysm of excitement he seized her arm, exclaiming: "You know more than you admit. Tell me then the truth. Who came home with Mrs. Cameron, and when?"