"Oh, if it's about money, I do not mind. That is a thing which must be attended to. But Stacy, dear, don't let them keep you long; but go at onst, and right back."
"The moment those rich old fellows will let me off—the very moment, dear!" cried the model husband, waving his hand airily toward the bed, and taking up both hat and cane; "so try and sleep."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
JUST FIFTY POUNDS.
Mrs. Stacy, thus reminded of her own needs, began to moan softly among her pillows, and called out to the walls and windows that she wished, if that pain was going to keep on so, that she never had been born. If it wasn't that she had the very best husband that ever drew breath, she would just give up, and want to die; but for his sake she would try and worry through.
Stacy was far out of reach both of the moans and this conjugal tribute to his goodness, for he had hastened to join that bank messenger who, somehow, took the form of his old sweetheart, and shaded him now and then with a coquettish bend of her parasol.
"Found your cane," observed Maggie, glancing at the ponderous gold-headed affair in the hand of her old lover.
"Oh, yes; no trouble; had just stood it up in a corner of the parlor."
Maggie laughed a little under the cover of her parasol, but kept a discreet silence about the locked door until she was snugly seated in the park, with Stacy crowded close to her side.
"Ah," he said, heaving a sigh that lifted the white vest like a snow-bank, "this is something like happiness! If you could only know what your haughtiness has driven me to—but it is no use trying to make you understand! Look at me, Miss Maggie! Am I the same man that adored you so? Don't answer. I am, I am, for—Harriet, forgive me, I love you yet—I love you yet!"