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Page 28
"Will--may I ask one of you," she stammered with her first show of
embarrassment during the meal, "to--to post this letter for me?"
Both gentlemen were standing and both gentlemen reached for it; but
it was into the secretary's hand she put it, though her husband's
was much the nearer. As Mr. Steele received it he gave it the
casual glance natural under the circumstances,--a glance which
instantly, however, took on an air of surprise that ended in a
smile.
"Have you not made some mistake?" he asked.
"This does not look like a letter." And he handed her back the
paper she had given him. With an involuntary ingathering of her
breath, she seemed to wake out of some dream and, looking down at
the envelope she held, she crushed it in her hand with a little
laugh in which I heard the note of real gaiety for the first time.
"Pardon me," she exclaimed; and, meeting his amused gaze with one
equally expressive, she carelessly added: "I certainly brought a
letter down with me."
Bowing pleasantly, but with that indefinable air of respect which
bespeaks the stranger, he waited while she hastened back to the
tray and drew from under it a second paper.
"Pardon my carelessness," she said. "I must have caught up a
scrawl of the baby's in taking this from my desk."
She brought forward a letter and ended the whole remarkable episode
by handing it now to her husband, who, with an apologetic glance at
the other, put it in his pocket.
I say remarkable; for in the folded slip which had passed back and
forth between her and the secretary, I saw, or thought I saw, a
likeness to the paper she had brought the night before out of the
attic.
If Mayor Packard saw anything unusual in his wife's action he made
no mention of it when I went into his study at nine o'clock. And
it was so much of an enigma to me that I was not ready to venture
a question regarding it.
Her increased spirits and more natural conduct were the theme of
the few sentences he addressed me, and while he urged precaution
and a continued watch upon his wife, he expressed the fondest hope
that he should find her fully restored on his return at the end of
two weeks.
I encouraged his hopes, and possibly shared them; but I changed my
mind, as he probably did his, when a few minutes later we met her
in the hall hurrying toward us with a newspaper in her hand and a
ghastly look on her face. "See! see! what they have dared to
print!" she cried, with a look, full of anguish, into his
bewildered face.
He took the sheet, read, and flushed, then suddenly grew white.
"Outrageous!" he exclaimed. Then tenderly, "My poor darling! that
they should dare to drag your name into this abominable campaign!"
"And for no reason," she faltered; "there is nothing wrong with me.
You believe that; you are sure of that," she cried. I saw the
article later. It ran something like this:
"Rumor has it that not even our genial mayor's closet is free from
the proverbial skeleton. Mrs. Packard's health is not what it
was,--and some say that the causes are not purely physical."
He tried to dissimulate. Putting his arm about her, he kissed her
fondly and protested with mingled energy and feeling:
"I believe you to be all you should be--a true woman and true
wife."
Her face lighted and she clung for a moment in passionate delight
to his breast; then she caught his look, which was tender but not
altogether open, and the shadows fell again as she murmured:
"You are not satisfied. Oh, what do you see, what do others see,
that I should be the subject of doubt? Tell me! I can never right
myself till I know."
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