“And how did you expect to support yourself?”

“There was some money in my purse—­you never let it get empty, Ned—­and—­I thought I wouldn’t need any very long.”

“Wouldn’t? why not?”

“Oh, I was sure, sure I couldn’t live long without you,” she cried, hugging him close and ending with a burst of tears and sobs.

“You dear, dear little thing!” he said with emotion, and tightening his clasp of her slight form; “after I had been so cruel to you, too!”

“No, you weren’t, except in going away without making up and saying good-by.”

“It’s very generous in you to say it, darling.  But how large was this sum of money that you expected to last as long as you needed any?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t stop to count it.  You can do that, if you want to.  I suppose the purse is in my satchel.”

He brought the satchel—­still unpacked—­took out the purse and examined its contents.

“Barely ten dollars,” he said.  “It would have lasted but a few days, and, my darling, what would have become of you then?”

He bent over her in grave tenderness.

“I don’t know, Ned,” she replied; “I suppose I’d have had to look for employment.”

“To think of you, my little, delicate, petted darling, looking for employment by which to earn your daily bread!” he exclaimed with emotion.  “It is plain you know nothing of the hardships and difficulties you would have had to encounter.  I shudder to think of it all.  But I should never have let it come to that.”

“Would you have looked for me, Ned?”

“I should have begun the search the instant I heard of your flight, nor ever have known a moment’s rest till I found you!” he exclaimed with energy.  “But as I came in the stage you purposed to take, I should have met and brought you back, if that fortunate mishap had not taken place.”

Then she told him of her thoughts, feelings, and painful anticipations while held fast in the relentless grasp of the door, finishing with, “Oh, I never could have dreamed that it would all end so well, so happily for me!”

“And yet, dear one, I do not think you at all realize how painful—­not to say dreadful—­would have been the consequences to you, to me, and, indeed, to all the family, if you had succeeded in carrying out what I must call your crazy scheme.”

She looked up at him in alarmed inquiry, and he went on, “’Madame Rumor, with her thousand tongues,’ would have had many a tale to tell of the cruel abuse to which you had been subjected by your husband and his family—­so cruel that you were compelled to run away in the night, taking advantage of the temporary absence of your tyrannical husband; while——­”

“O Ned, dear Ned, I never thought of that!” she exclaimed, interrupting him with a burst of tears and sobs.  “I wouldn’t for the world have wrought harm to you or any of them.”

“No, love, I know you wouldn’t.  I believe your motives were altogether kind and self-sacrificing,” he said soothingly; “and you yourself would have been the greatest sufferer; the world judges hardly—­how hardly my little girl-wife has no idea; wicked people would have found wicked motives to which to impute your act and caused a stain upon your fair fame that might never have been removed.