Mrs. Dinneford became almost wild with excitement.  Her fair face grew purple.  Her eyes shone with a fierce light.

“Have you had him arrested?” she asked.

“Oh no, no, no!” Mr. Dinneford answered.  “For poor Edith’s sake, if for nothing else, this dreadful business must be kept secret.  I will take up the note when due, and the public need be none the wiser.”

“If,” said Mrs. Dinneford, “he has forged your name once, he has, in all probability, done it again and again.  No, no; the thing can’t be hushed up, and it must not be.  Is he less a thief and a robber because he is our son-in-law?  My daughter the wife of a forger!  Great heavens! has it come to this Mr. Dinneford?” she added, after a pause, and with intense bitterness and rejection in her voice.  “The die is cast!  Never again, if I can prevent it, shall that scoundrel cross our threshold.  Let the law have its course.  It is a crime to conceal crime.”

“It will kill our poor child!” answered Mr. Dinneford in a broken voice.

“Death is better than the degradation of living with a criminal,” replied his wife.  “I say it solemnly, and I mean it; the die is cast!  Come what will, George Granger stands now and for ever on the outside!  Go at once and give information to the bank officers.  If you do not, I will.”

With a heavy heart Mr. Dinneford returned to the bank and informed the president that the note in question was a forgery.  He had been gone from home a little over half an hour, when Granger, who had come to ask him about the three notes given him that morning by Freeling, put his key in the door, and found, a little to his surprise, that the latch was down.  He rang the bell, and in a few moments the servant appeared.  Granger was about passing in, when the man said, respectfully but firmly, as he held the door partly closed,

“My orders are not to let you come in.”

“Who gave you those orders?” demanded Granger, turning white.

“Mrs. Dinneford.”

“I wish to see Mr. Dinneford, and I must see him immediately.”

“Mr. Dinneford is not at home,” answered the servant.

“Shut that door instantly!”

It was the voice of Mrs. Dinneford, speaking from within.  Granger heard it; in the next moment the door was shut in his face.

The young man hardly knew how he got back to the store.  On his arrival he found himself under arrest, charged with forgery, and with fresh evidence of the crime on his person in the three notes received that morning from his partner, who denied all knowledge of their existence, and appeared as a witness against him at the hearing before a magistrate.  Granger was held to bail to answer the charge at the next term of court.

It would have been impossible to keep all this from Edith, even if there had been a purpose to do so.  Mrs. Dinneford chose to break the dreadful news at her own time and in her own way.  The shock was fearful.  On the night that followed her baby was born.