"I cannot see it," he said; "the children have improved very much in the two years that she has been with us."
"And of course all the credit of that belongs to her! there is none at all due to me. I often wonder, Mr. Dinsmore, how you came to marry a woman for whom you entertain so little admiration or respect."
"That is hardly a fair inference from what I have said," he rejoined in a tone of weariness and disgust; for she had tried his patience not a little that day with her whims and follies.
He rose with the last word and withdrew to the library. He was sitting before the fire in his easy chair, seemingly lost in thought, when the door opened softly and Mildred glided across the room and stood at his side.
As he looked up he saw that her features were working with emotion, her eyes full of tears.
"What is it?" he asked, in a startled tone; "she's not gone, I hope?"
Mildred shook her head, and with a burst of tears and a whispered "I could almost wish she was if—if I was quite sure she was prepared," pointed significantly to the marked paragraph in the paper which she held before him.
He read it, and then looked up at her with an inquiring "Well?" upon which Mildred told her reasons for connecting that item of news with Miss Worth's sudden seizure, repeating the words gasped out by the pale, trembling lips of the governess on her partial restoration to consciousness.
"I thought then that her mind wandered," concluded Mildred, "but since reading this, I fear her words were only too true."
"Poor thing!" he sighed. "I'm afraid she knows by sad experience all that she rescued Juliet from. Well, Milly, we will do the best we can for her. And, child, don't distress yourself unnecessarily. It will do her no good, you know."