treated them exactly as we did if they had come without any message from
John; so I do not know why we should lay any stress on that, or even
speak of it. The simple fact is that we have opened our house to
two strangers in distress. Your husband," continued Mr. Hale's
mother-in-law, "does not require to know more. As to the letter and
package, we will keep that for further consideration. It cannot be of
much importance, or they would have spoken of it before; it is probably
some trifling present as a return for your hospitality. I should use no
INDECOROUS haste in having it opened."
The two women kissed Mrs. Scott with a feeling of relief, and fell
back into the monotony of their household duties. It is to be feared,
however, that the absence of their outlawed guests was nearly as
dangerous as their presence in the opportunity it afforded for
uninterrupted and imaginative reflection. Both Kate and Josephine were
at first shocked and wounded by the discovery of the real character of
the two men with whom they had associated so familiarly, but it was no
disparagement to their sense of propriety to say that the shock did not
last long, and was accompanied with the fascination of danger. This was
succeeded by a consciousness of the delicate flattery implied in their
indirect influence over the men who had undoubtedly risked their lives
for the sake of remaining with them. The best woman is not above being
touched by the effect of her power over the worst man, and Kate at first
allowed herself to think of Falkner in that light. But if in her later
reflections he suffered as a heroic experience to be forgotten, he
gained something as an actual man to be remembered. Now that the
proposed rides from "his friend's house" were a part of the illusion,
would he ever dare to visit them again? Would she dare to see him? She
held her breath with a sudden pain of parting that was new to her; she
tried to think of something else, to pick up the scattered threads of
her life before that eventful day. But in vain; that one week had filled
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