"What ails you, Wilford?" his mother asked, but he answered pettishly: "Nothing, so pray don't look at me so curiously as if I was hiding some terrible secret."
He was hiding a secret, and it almost betrayed itself, when at last he said good-by to his mother, who followed him to the door and stood looking after him in the darkness until the sound of his footsteps died away upon the pavement. There was a fire in his room and Wilford sat down to write the brief note he would leave, for when the night shut down again he would not be there. He could not feel that the parting from Katy would be final, because he did not believe she had sinned as he counted sin, but she certainly preferred another to himself; she had deceived him and played the successful hypocrite. This was Wilford's accusation against his wife; this for what she must be punished, until such time as his royal clemency saw fit to forgive and take her back as he meant to. He had no fear of her going to Morris, or to the farmhouse either, for much as she was attached to her family, he believed she would shrink from a return to poverty, choosing rather the luxuries of her city home. And he would put no impediment in the way of her staying there as long as she liked; he would arrange that for her, feeling himself very magnanimous as he thought of giving her permission to invite her mother to New York as a kind of protection against scandalous remarks. Mrs. Lennox and Helen too should come. That certainly was generous, and lest his goodness should abate he seized his pen and wrote:
DEAR KATY: Your own conscience will tell you whether you are worthy of being addressed as 'Dear,' but I have called you thus so often that I cannot bring myself to any other form. Do my words startle you, and will you be sorry when you read this and find that I am gone, that you are free from the husband you do not love, the husband whom perhaps you never loved, though I thought you did? I trusted you once, and now I do not blame you as much as I ought, for you are young. You are easily influenced. You are very susceptible to flattery, as was proven by your career at Saratoga and Newport. I had no suspicion of you then, but now that I know you better, I see that it was not all childish simplicity which made you smile so graciously upon those who sought your favor. You are a coquette, Katy, and the greater one because of that semblance of artlessness which is the perfection of art. This, however, I might forgive, were it not for one flagrant act, which, if it is not a proof of faithlessness, certainly borders upon it. You know to what I refer, or if you do not, ask your smooth-tongued saint, your companion in the New Haven train; he will enlighten you; he will not wonder at my going, and perhaps he will offer you comfort, both religious and otherwise; but if you ever wish me to return, avoid him as you would shun a deadly poison. Until I countermand the order I wish you to remain here in this house, which I bought for you. Helen and your mother both may live with you, while father will have a general oversight of your affairs; I shall send him a line to that effect. And now, good-by. I am very calm as I write this, because I know you have deceived me. Not as I did you with regard to Genevra, but in a deeper sense, which touches a tenderer point and makes me willing to brave the talk my sudden departure will create. No one knows I am going, no one will know until you have waited and looked in vain for me with the gay young men who to-morrow night-will join their wives as I hoped yesterday morning to join mine. But that is over now. I cannot come to you. I am going away, where—it matters not to you. So farewell.
Your deceived and disappointed husband.
Had Wilford read this letter over, he might not have left it, but he did not read it, and in recalling its contents he gave himself great credit for his forbearance when speaking of Morris, whom he hated so cordially. Sealing the letter, and laying it in Katy's drawer just above where she had left his, he tried to sleep; but the morning found him haggard and tired, and Esther, as she poured his coffee, asked if he was sick.
"No," he answered, and then as he pushed back his chair, he said: "I shall not be home again to-day, as Mrs. Cameron expects me to spend Sunday at Yonkers."
And so all that day and the next, the doors were locked, the shutters closed, the curtains dropped, while an ominous silence reigned throughout the house; but when Monday came, and was halfway gone there were inquiries made for Mr. Cameron by young Beverley and Lincoln, whose faces looked anxious and disturbed at Esther's answer:
"He went to Yonkers, Saturday. I have not seen him since."
Out at Yonkers on Saturday night, three young wives had waited for their husbands, and none more eagerly than Katy, who, fair as a lily, in her dark dress, with her soft hair curling about her face, sat by the window watching for the carriage from the station, hers the first ear to catch the sound of wheels, and here the first form upon the piazza.