“Genevra!  Genevra, Wilford’s first wife!  Thunder and lightning! what are you talking about?” and Father Cameron bent down to look in Katy’s face, thinking she was going mad.

But Katy was not mad, and knowing it was now too late to retract, she told the story of Genevra Lambert to the old man, who, utterly confounded, stalked up and down the room, kicking away chairs and footstools, and whatever came in his way, and swearing promiscuously at his wife and Wilford, whom he pronounced a precious pair of fools, with a dreadful adjective appended to the fools, and an emphasis in his voice which showed he meant what he said.

“It’s all accounted for now,” he said, “the piles of money that boy had abroad, his privacy with his mother, and all the other tomfoolery I could not understand.  Katy,” and pausing in his walk, Mr. Cameron came close to his daughter-in-law, who was lying with her face upon the sofa.  “Katy, be glad your baby died.  Had it lived it might have proved a curse just as mine have done—­not all, for Bell, though fiery as a pepper-pod, has some heart, some sense—­and there was Jack, my oldest boy, a little fast, it’s true; but when he died over the sea, I forgave all that, forgetting the chair he broke over a tutor’s head, and the scrapes for which I paid as high as a thousand at one time.  He sowed his wild oats, and died before he could reap them, died a good man, I believe, and went to heaven.  Juno you know, and you can judge whether she is such as would delight a parent’s heart; while Wilford, my only boy, to deceive me so; though I knew he was a fool in some things, I did trust Wilford.”

The old man’s voice shook now, and Katy felt his tears dropping on her hair as he stooped down over her.  Checking them, however, he said: 

“And he was cross because you found him out.  Was there no other reason?”

Katy thought of Dr. Morris, but she could not tell of that, and so she answered: 

“There was—­but please don’t ask me now.  I can’t tell, only I was not to blame.  Believe me, father, I was not to blame.”

“I’ll swear to that,” was the reply, as Father Cameron commenced his walking again.  “He may have left some word, some line,” he said.  “Suppose you look.  It would probably be upstairs.”

Katy had not thought of this, but it seemed reasonable that it should be so, and going to her room, followed by Father Cameron, she went, as by some instinct, to the very drawer where the letter lay.

There was perfect silence while she read it through, Mr. Cameron never taking his eyes from the face which turned first white, then red, then spotted, and finally took a leaden hue as Katy ran over the lines, comprehending the truth as she read, and when the letter was finished, lifting her dry, tearless eyes to Father Cameron, and whispering to herself: 

“Deserted!”

She let him read the letter, and when he had finished explained the parts he did not understand, telling him now what Morris had confessed, telling him too that in her first sorrow, when life and sense seemed reeling, she had gone to Dr. Grant, who had brought her back, as a brother might have done, and this was the result.