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 to have been a fatally foolish step on his wife's part. Ormond, he said, had come home from America (he wrote as if they had all been well aware that he had gone there), with a charming wife and a beautiful child. He did not mention that he looked quite an old man, and that the white moustache he wore completely changed the expression of his face. But so it was. Ormond had materialised in spite of the few seconds of his last meeting with Johanna, and the self-abnegation of his parting words; and the moustache, bad it been removed, would have revealed a cynical curve of the lips that erstwhile had drooped, before the sorrow that was to come.

Johanna read about the charming wife and beautiful little child with eyes that beamed with joy. The deacon, on the other hand, made no comment—verbal or expressive.