"No; he's preoccupied with other matters that he wanted me to talk to you about," said her husband, hesitatingly."He is--""Because"--continued Mrs.Blandford in the same measured tone, "if he does not add his own evil company to his advice, it is the best he has ever given yet.I think he might have taken another day than the Lord's to talk about it, but we must not despise the means nor the hour whence the truth comes.Father wanted me to take some reasonable moment to prepare you to consider it seriously, and Ithought of talking to you about it to-morrow.He thinks it would be a very judicious plan.Even Deacon Truesdail--""Having sold his invoice of damaged sugar kettles for mining purposes, is converted," said Blandford, goaded into momentary testiness by his wife's unexpected acquiescence and a sudden recollection of Demorest's prophecy."You have changed your opinion, Joan, since last fall, when you couldn't bear to think of my leaving you," he added reproachfully.
"I couldn't bear to think of your joining the mob of lawless and sinful men who use that as an excuse for leaving their wives and families.As for my own feelings, Edward, I have never allowed them to stand between me and what I believed best for our home and your Christian welfare.Though I have no cause to admire the influence that I find this man, Demorest, still holds over you, Iam willing to acquiesce, as you see, in what he advises for your good.You can hardly reproach ME, Edward, for worldly or selfish motives.
Blandford felt keenly the bitter truth of his wife's speech.For the moment he would gladly have exchanged it for a more illogical and selfish affection, but he reflected that he had married this religious girl for the security of an affection which he felt was not subject to the temptations of the world--or even its own weakness--as was too often the case with the giddy maidens whom he had known through Demorest's companionship.It was, therefore, more with a sense of recalling this distinctive quality of his wife than any loyalty to Demorest that he suddenly resolved to confide to her the latter's fatuous folly.
"I know it, dear," he said, apologetically, "and we'll talk it over to-morrow, and it may be possible to arrange it so that you shall go with me.But, speaking of Demorest, I think you don't quite do HIM justice.He really respects YOUR feelings and your knowledge of right and wrong more than you imagine.I actually believe he came here to-night merely to get me to interest you in an extraordinary love affair of his.I mean, Joan," he added hastily, seeing the same look of dull repression come over her face, "Imean, Joan--that is, you know, from all I can judge--it is something really serious this time.He intends to reform.And this is because he has become violently smitten with a young woman whom he has only seen half a dozen times, at long intervals, whom he first met in a railway train, and whose name and residence he don't even know."There was an ominous silence--so hushed that the ticking of the allegorical clock came like a grim monitor."Then," said Mrs.
Blandford, in a hard, dry voice that her alarmed husband scarcely recognized, "he proposed to insult your wife by taking her into his shameful confidence.""Good heavens! Joan, no--you don't understand.At the worst, this is some virtuous but silly school-girl, who, though she may be intending only an innocent flirtation with him, has made this man actually and deeply in love with her.Yes; it is a fact, Joan.Iknow Dick Demorest, and if ever there was a man honestly in love, it is he.""Then you mean to say that this man--an utter stranger to me--a man whom I've never laid my eyes on--whom I wouldn't know if I met in the street--expects me to advise him--to--to--" She stopped.
Blandford could scarcely believe his senses.There were tears in her eyes--this woman who never cried; her voice trembled--she who had always controlled her emotions.
