* * * * *

To Miss Lucilla, in her ignorance of the world, it seemed, as she read on, as if the foundations of the great deep had been broken up and the windows of heaven opened.  That such things happened in romances, she had read; that they were not unknown in real life, even in New York, she had heard it whispered; but that they should crop up in her own immediate circle was not less wonderful than if the night-blooming cereus had suddenly burst into flower in her strip of garden.  Miss Lucilla owned to being shocked, to being grieved, to being puzzled, to being stunned; but she could not deny the thrill of excitement at being caught up into the whirl of a real love-affair.

When the first of the morning’s duties in the sickroom were over she waylaid Mrs. Eveleth in a convenient spot and told her tale.  She did not read the letter aloud, finding its phraseology at times too blunt; but, with those softening circumlocutions of which good women have the secret, she conveyed the facts.  There was but one short passage which she quoted just as Diane had written it: 

“’I am sure my mother-in-law will stand by me, and bear me out.  She alone knows the sort of life I led with her son, and I am convinced that she will see justice done me.’”

Mrs. Eveleth listened silently, with the still look of pain that belongs to those growing old in the expectation of misfortune.

“I’ve been afraid something would happen,” was her only comment.

“But surely, dear Mrs. Eveleth, you don’t think any of it can be true!”

The elder woman began moving toward the door.

“So many things have been true, dear, that I hoped were not!”

This answer, given from the threshold, left Miss Lucilla not more aghast than disappointed.  It brought into the romance features which no single woman can afford to contemplate.  She would have entered into the affairs of a wronged heroine with enthusiastic interest; but what was to be done with those of a possibly guilty one?  She was so ready for the unexpected that as she stood at a back window, looking into the garden, it was almost a surprise not to find the night-blooming cereus really lifting its exotic head among the stout spring shoots of the peonies.  With the vague feeling that the Park might prove more fruitful ground for the phenomenon, she moved to a front window, where she was not long unrewarded.  If it was not the night-blooming cereus that drove up in the handsome, open automobile, turning into the Park, it was something equally portentous; for Mrs. Bayford had already played a part in Diane’s drama, and was now, presumably, about to enter on the scene again.  Miss Lucilla drew back, so as to be out of sight, while keeping her visitors in view.  For a minute she hoped that Marion Grimston herself might be minded to make her a call, for she liked the handsome girl, whose outspoken protests against the