Family Pride

The old man's voice shook now, and Katy felt his tears dropping on her hair as he stooped down over her. Checking them, however, he said: "And he was cross because you found him out. Was there no other reason?"

Katy thought of Dr. Morris, but she could not tell of that, and so she answered: "There was--but please don't ask me now. I can't tell, only I was not to blame. Believe me, father, I was not to blame."

"I'll swear to that," was the reply, as Father Cameron commenced his walking again. "He may have left some word, some line," he said. "Suppose you look. It would probably be upstairs."

Katy had not thought of this, but it seemed reasonable that it should be so, and going to her room, followed by Father Cameron, she went, as by some instinct, to the very drawer where the letter lay.

There was perfect silence while she read it through, Mr. Cameron never taking his eyes from the face which turned first white, then red, then spotted, and finally took a leaden hue as Katy ran over the lines, comprehending the truth as she read, and when the letter was finished, lifting her dry, tearless eyes to Father Cameron, and whispering to herself: "Deserted!"

She let him read the letter, and when he had finished explained the parts he did not understand, telling him now what Morris had confessed, telling him too that in her first sorrow, when life and sense seemed reeling, she had gone to Dr. Grant, who had brought her back, as a brother might have done, and this was the result.

"Why did you say you went to him--that is, what was the special reason?" Mr. Cameron asked, and after a moment's hesitancy, Katy told him her belief that Genevra was living--that it was she who made the bridal trousseau for Wilford's second wife, who nursed his child until it died, giving to it her own name, arraying it for the grave, and then leaving, as she always did, before the father came.

"I never told Wilford," Katy said. "I felt as if I would rather he should not know it yet. Perhaps I was wrong, but if so, I have been terribly punished."

Mr. Cameron could not look upon the woman who stood before him, so helpless and stricken in her desolation, and believe her wrong in anything. The guilt lay in another direction, and when as the terrible reality that she was indeed a deserted wife came rushing over Katy, she tottered toward him for help, he stretched his arms out for her, and taking the sinking figure in them, laid it upon the sofa as gently, as kindly as Wilford had ever touched it in his most loving days.