for my folly in marrying my inferior. The name on the card is 'Mrs. Plowden.'"
A blood-curdling groan nearly froze the blood in the veins of the guests. It came from under the table, whence, simultaneously with it, emerged Plowden, to whom terror lent instant animation and activity.
"My wife!" he breathed, huskily.
"Your wife!" exclaimed Gertrude. "Then it is true! You are a bigamist!"
"Yes! No! She's dead! Save me from her!" he cried incoherently, rushing to the French window overlooking the lawn and throwing it open. "You will forgive me, Gertrude," he declaimed, with his foot upon the window-sill, "when the black waters are surging over my head. Farewell! Farewell forever!" And leaping out into the darkness, he was gone.
"Stop him! stop him, someone!" pleaded Gertrude. "He will drown himself!"
"He can't," sneered Miss Fithian; "the fish-pond is frozen over."
"I would advise you, sir," now remarked Mrs. Rutherford to her husband, in a voice of suppressed passion, "to follow your fellow-criminal."
"I will, madam," he retorted, in a like tone of restrained fury; "and since you actually presume to order me from my own house, I go – never to return." As he spoke, he too passed out through the window.
A momentary awe seemed to oppress those remaining at the table. The silence was soon broken, however, by Wildfen saying to his wife:
"A pretty row you've made all around, haven't you?"
"I!" exclaimed Lydia, in amazement.
"Yes, you."
"How?"
"Why, by giving Mrs. Honey a letter of introduction to Mrs. Rutherford – as you confessed to me you did."
"I'm sure I didn't mean any harm by it."
"You did," persisted the quarrelsome Wildfen. "You're always making mischief and pretending you don't mean to."
"I'm not."
"You are. And I want to tell you, once for all, that I'm tired of your eternally contradicting me. Do it once more, just once, and I'll follow the other gentlemen."
"Who cares if you do?"
"You do."
"I don't."
"What! already! Now I am off;" and he sprang up and started for the window.
"Good-bye, and good riddance," Lydia called out, as his form vanished in the darkness without, and the window closed behind him with a slam; then sank back in her chair, laughing hysterically. This roused Mrs. Rutherford from the semi-stupor into which she had sunk.
"Laugh," she said bitterly, rousing herself; "laugh while my heart is breaking. No, do not speak. I want no sympathy, no pity. I know his perfidy now, and shall know how to act."
"Why! what's happened to Mrs. Plowden?" exclaimed Lydia.
"She has been in a faint since her villain escaped," replied Miss Fithian, who was supporting the unconscious form, "and I've been trying to revive her."
"Open the window," suggested Edna.
"No, don't," cried the contradictory Lydia. "If you do, I'll catch my death of cold."
"She's coming to," said Mrs. Honey. "Oh, here's the punch coming in. Give her a drink of that and she will be all right."
Sam, who brought in the steaming punch-bowl and placed it upon the table, stared about him in amazement, unable to comprehend the mysterious disappearance of all the gentlemen. He knew that Mr. Honey had gone out by the front door, but, the window being closed, the idea of the others having made their exit by that way did not occur to him.
"Where's the woman who brought that card, Sam?" spoke up Miss Fithian. "Ask her in. She will bear evidence to the truth of my charge."
"Why, miss," replied Sam, "dat a' woman acted de mos' curusest you ebber see. She done come to de do' an' stan' dah, till she see dat a' Mistah Honey come a-shootin' out de dinin'-room do' an' fro' de front do' like he done gone mad. She scrunch herself clus agin de wall fo' to let him pahs, an' he go by like de bird an' nebber see her. Den she scoot out an' scuttle off, like de debble he after her, in jes' de udder way what he didn't took."
"Strange!" commented Mrs. Wildfen, and looked disappointed when no familiar voice responded, "No, it isn't." The silence and the empty chair beside her quickly reminded her that her contradictor was gone – perhaps forever.
IV.
CHRISTMAS
When Rutherford, in a white heat of wrath, rushed from the house, he found Plowden in the garden, jumping from one foot to the other with an agility surprising in a man of his age, and vigorously slapping his sides with his arms, as if embracing an invisible friend.
"What are you doing?" asked the lawyer.
"Trying to keep myself warm. Why do you follow me?"
"Because I was ordered to – "
"It is useless; leave me to my fate."
"Hello! Who's that?" exclaimed Rutherford, as he caught the sound of a man's running. "Hello!"
"'Ullo, yourself," came back in the unmistakable English accent of Honey, who quickly came up, panting.
"It's Bow-Bells," said Rutherford. "Why are you running so?"
"To keep warm. I've run hup an' down the road, hand I cawn't see no signs of hany hinn or public."
"No; there is none near. But come with me. I am still your host, and I think I can make you at least measurably comfortable for the night in the billiard-house."
As they eagerly started to follow Rutherford, glad of any shelter, a voice was heard behind them hallooing, "Hi, there!" and brought them to a halt.
"Ha! ha!" laughed Rutherford, "if it isn't Wildfen! There has evidently been a general mutiny among the women."
"Where are you all going?" asked Wildfen, joining them. "Take me along, wherever it is."
"Come on quickly, then," replied Rutherford, leading the way, like the captain of a small skirmishing party, to the billiard-house.
It seemed by the flickering light of a match rather a bare, desolate, cheerless sort of place, but they were all too glad to find shelter, to make any complaints. "And now," he continued, having lighted a lamp, "make yourselves as comfortable as you can, while I find Sam and get some things to render our plight a little more endurable."
"If he could slip our overcoats out of the hall and bring them here," suggested Plowden.
"Of course he can. Don't be uneasy; you'll be all right in a few minutes."
"No, we won't," muttered Wildfen, querulously, in an undertone.
"Of course; we shall be quite jolly, you know," spoke up Honey cheerfully, in reply to Rutherford's encouraging words.
Plowden said nothing. His soul was precipitated into a depth of gloom, where its only company was a vaguely-formed but terrible demon labelled "Bigamy." It was that presence, even more than the weather, which made him shiver.
Rutherford was gone but a short time, and when he returned was accompanied by Sam, who bore a load of overcoats and a bottle of some amber fluid that seemed to bestow warmth and animation. The faithful old servant proved himself an able skirmisher. Snatching a pillow from one room and a blanket from another, making prey of a quilt here and a comforter there, he succeeded eventually in getting from the guest-chambers a fair supply of bedding, which he transferred to the billiard-house. He also got in an ample pile of wood, with which Honey skilfully made a rousing fire on the broad, open hearth. Honey, too, utilized the bedding as it was brought in, making as comfortable couches as possible under the circumstances, on a sofa and three chairs for Plowden and Wildfen, and upon the floor for himself. Rutherford dragged from a closet an old hammock that he sometimes used to take a summer afternoon nap in, and said he would sleep in that, with a blanket around him. Honey found another lamp and lighted it. What with the cheery glow of the dancing firelight, the bright lamps, and the colors of the bedding