“You are late,” said her husband, as she came in.

“Yes,” she replied, “later than I intended.”

“What’s the matter?” he inquired, looking at her narrowly.

“Why do you ask?” She tried to put on an air of indifference.

“You look pale and your voice is disturbed.”

“The driver went through parts of the town in returning that made me feel nervous, as I thought of my lonely and unprotected situation.”

“Why did he do that?”

“It wasn’t to make the way shorter, for the directest route would have brought me home ten minutes ago.  I declare!  The fellow’s conduct made me right nervous.  I thought a dozen improbable things.”

“It is the last time I will employ him,” said Hartley.  “How dare he go a single block away from a direct course, at this late hour?” He spoke with rising indignation.

At first, Irene resolved to inform her husband of Major Willard’s conduct, but it will be seen by this conversation that she had changed her mind, at least for the present.  Two or three things caused her to hesitate until she could turn the matter over in her thoughts more carefully.  Pride had its influence.  She did not care to admit that she had been in error and Hartley right as to Major Willard.  But there was a more sober aspect of the case.  Hartley was excitable, brave and strong-willed.  She feared the consequences that might follow if he were informed of Major Willard’s outrageous conduct.  A personal collision she saw to be almost inevitable in this event.  Mortifying publicity, if not the shedding of blood, would ensue.

So, for the present at least, she resolved to keep her own secret, and evaded the close queries of her husband, who was considerably disturbed by the alleged conduct of the driver.

One good result followed this rather startling experience.  Irene said no more about attending the conversaziones of Mrs. Talbot.  She did not care to meet Major Willard again, and as he was a regular visitor at Mrs. Talbot’s, she couldn’t go there without encountering him.  Her absence on the next social evening was remarked by her new friend, who called on her the next day.

“I didn’t see you last night,” said the agreeable Mrs. Talbot.

“No, I remained at home,” replied Mrs. Emerson, the smile with which she had received her friend fading partly away.

“Not indisposed, I hope?”

“No.”

“But your husband was!  Talk it right out, my pretty one!” said Mrs. Talbot, in a gay, bantering tone.  “Indisposed in mind.  He don’t like the class of people one meets at my house.  Men of his stamp never do.”

It was on the lips of Mrs. Emerson to say that there might be ground for his dislike of some who were met there.  But she repressed even a remote reference to an affair that, for the gravest of reasons, she still desired to keep as her own secret.  So she merely answered—­