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For an instant Mr. Rylands was shocked at this unwonted exposure. He had never seen his wife in evening-dress before. It was true they were alone, and in their own sitting-room, but the room was still invested with that formality and publicity which seemed to accent this indiscretion. The simple-minded frontier man’s mind went back to Jane, to the hired man, to the expressman, the stranger, all of whom might have noticed it also.

“You have a new dress,” he said slowly, “have you worn it all day?”

“No,” she said, with a timid smile. “I only put it on just before you came. It’s the one I used to wear in the ballroom scene in ‘Gay Times in ‘Frisco.’ You don’t know it, I know. I thought I would wear it tonight, and then,” she suddenly grasped his hand, “you’ll let me put all these things away forever! Won’t you, Josh? I’ve seen such nice pretty calico at the store to-day, and I can make up one or two home dresses, like Jane’s, only better fitting, of course. In fact, I asked them to send the roll up here to-morrow for you to see.”

Mr. Rylands felt relieved. Perhaps his views had changed about the moral effect of her retaining these symbols of her past, for he consented to the calico dresses, not, however, without an inward suspicion that she would not look so well in them, and that the one she had on was more becoming.

Meantime she tried another piece of music. It was equally incongruous and slightly Bacchantic.

“There used to be a mighty pretty dance went to that,” she said, nodding her head in time with the music, and assisting the heavily spasmodic attempts of the instrument with the pleasant levity of her voice. “I used to do it.”

“Ye might try it now, Ellen,” suggested her husband, with a half-frightened, half-amused tolerance.

“YOU play, then,” said Mrs. Rylands quickly, offering her seat to him.

Mr. Rylands sat down to the harmonium, as Mrs. Rylands briskly moved the table and chairs against the wall. Mr. Rylands played slowly and strenuously, as from a conscientious regard of the instrument. Mrs. Rylands stood in the centre of the floor, making a rather pretty, animated picture, as she again stimulated the heavy harmonium swell not only with her voice but her hands and feet. Presently she began to skip.

I should warn the reader here that this was before the “shawl” or “skirt” dancing was in vogue, and I am afraid that pretty Mrs. Rylands’s performances would now be voted slow. Her silk skirt and frilled petticoat were lifted just over her small ankles and tiny bronze-kid shoes. In the course of a pirouette or two, there was a slight further revelation of blue silk stockings and some delicate embroidery, but really nothing more than may be seen in the sweep of a modern waltz. Suddenly the music ceased. Mr. Rylands had left the harmonium and walked over to the hearth. Mrs. Rylands stopped, and came towards him with a flushed, anxious face.

“It don’t seem to go right, does it?” she said, with her nervous laugh. “I suppose I’m getting too old now, and I don’t quite remember it.”

“Better forget it altogether,” he replied gravely. He stopped at seeing a singular change in her face, and added awkwardly, “When I told you I didn’t want you to be ashamed of your past, nor to try to forget what you were, I didn’t mean such things as that!”

“What did you mean?” she said timidly.

The truth was that Mr. Rylands did not know. He had known this sort of thing only in the abstract. He had never had the least acquaintance with the class to which his wife had belonged, nor known anything of their methods. It was a revelation to him now, in the woman he loved, and who was his wife. He was not shocked so much as he was frightened.