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“There wasn’t the slightest danger of that–“

“He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring the disgrace on your wife and children.”

“Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long ago. And I don’t think–I never thought–that Tedham would have let the suspicion rest on me. He merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investigation began, so as to gain time to get out to Canada.”

My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw tender affection dangerously near contempt. “You are a very forgiving man, Basil,” she said, and I looked down sheepishly. “Well, at any rate, you have had the sense not to mix yourself up in his business. Did he pretend that he came straight to you, as soon as he got out? I suppose he wanted you to believe that he appealed to you before he tried anybody else.”

“Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask for my address, and after he had visited the cemetery he came on out here. And, if you must know, I think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Put him behind a good horse, with a pocketful of some one else’s money, in a handsome suit of clothes, and a game-and-fish dinner at Tafft’s in immediate prospect, and you couldn’t see any difference between the Tedham of to-day and the Tedham of ten years ago, except that the actual Tedham is clean-shaved and wears his hair cut rather close.”

“Basil!”

“Why do you object to the fact? Did you imagine he had changed inwardly?”

“He must have suffered.”

“But does suffering change people? I doubt it. Certain material accessories of Tedham’s have changed. But why should that change Tedham? Of course, he has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out some hints of what he had been through that would have broken my heart if I hadn’t hardened it against him. And he loves his daughter still, and he wants to see her, poor wretch.”

“I suppose he does!” sighed my wife.

“He would hardly take no for an answer from me, when I said I wouldn’t go to the Haskeths for him; and when I fairly shook him off, he wanted me to ask you to go.”

“And what did you say?” she asked, not at all with the resentment I had counted upon equally with the possible pathos; you never can tell in the least how any woman will take anything, which is perhaps the reason why men do not trust women more.

“I told him that it would not be the smallest use to ask you; that you had forgiven that old affair as well as I had, but that women were different, and that I knew you wouldn’t even see him.”

“Well, Basil, I don’t know what right you had to put me in that odious light,” said my wife.

“Why, good heavens! Would you have seen him?”

“I don’t know whether I would or not. That’s neither here nor there. I don’t think it was very nice of you to shift the whole responsibility on me.”

“How did I do that? It seems to me that I kept the whole responsibility myself.”

“Yes, altogether too much. What became of him, then?”

“We walked along a little farther, and then–“

“Then, what? Where is the man?”

“He’s down in the parlor,” I answered hardily, in the voice of some one else.

My wife stood up from the lounge, and I rose, too, for whatever penalty she chose to inflict.

“Well, Basil, that is what I call a very cowardly thing.”

“Yes, my dear, it is; I ought to have protected you against his appeal. But you needn’t see him. It’s practically the same as if he had not come here. I can send him away.”

“And you call that practically the same! No, I am the one that will have to do the refusing now, and it is all off your shoulders. And you knew I was not feeling very well, either! Basil, how could you?”