“Of course, I knew you had been drinking, that night,” she said, when his story was done, and his face was pressed lightly against the white parting in her soft, brown hair.  “I saw it, after—­after the ceremony.  You—­you were going to kiss me, and I caught the odor of liquor, and I felt that you wouldn’t have done that if you had been yourself; it frightened me, a little.  But you talked perfectly straight, and I never knew you weren’t the man—­Frank Cameron—­until you came here.  Then I saw you couldn’t be he.  Chester had known you when Frank was at home with his mother—­I compared dates and was sure of that—­and he called you Ford Campbell.  So then I saw what a horrible blunder I’d made, and I was worried nearly to death!  But I couldn’t see what I could do about it, and you didn’t—­”

“Say, what about this Frank Cameron, anyway?” Ford demanded, with true male jealousy.  “What did you want to marry him for?  You couldn’t have known him, or—­”

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand—­” Josephine gave a little, impatient turn of the head, “unless you knew his mother.  I did know Frank, a long time ago, when I was twelve or thirteen, and when I saw you, I thought he’d changed a lot.  But it was his mother; she was the dearest thing, but—­queer.  Sort of childish, you know.  And she just worshiped Frank, and used to watch for the postman—­oh, it was too pitiful!  Sometimes I’d write a letter myself, and pretend it was from him, and read it to her; her eyes were bad, so it was easy—­”

“Where was this Frank?” Ford interrupted.

“Oh, I don’t know!  I never did know.  Somewhere out West, we thought.  I used to make believe the letters came from Helena, or Butte, because that was where she heard from him last.  He was always promising to come home—­in the letters.  That used to make her so much better,” she explained naively.  “And sometimes she’d be able to go out in the yard and fuss with her flowers, after one like that.  But he never came, and so she got the notion that he was wild and a spendthrift.  I suppose he was, or he’d have written, or something.  She had lots and lots of money and property, you know.

“Well,” Josephine took one of Ford’s hand and patted it reassuringly, “she got the notion that I must marry Frank, when he came home.  I tried to reason her out of that, and it only made her worse.  It grew on her, and I got so I couldn’t bear to write any more letters, and that made it worse still.  She made a will that I must marry Frank within a year after she died, or he wouldn’t get anything but a hundred dollars—­and she was worth thousands and thousands.”  Josephine snuggled closer.  “She was shrewd, too.  I was not to get anything except a few trinkets.  And if we didn’t marry, the money would all go to an old ladies’ home.

“So, when she died, I felt as if I ought to do something, you see.  It didn’t seem right to let him lose the property, even if he wouldn’t write to his mother.  So I had the lawyers try to find him.  I thought I could marry him, and let him get the property, and then—­well, I counted on getting a divorce.”  She looked up quickly into Ford’s face.