demanded: "Is there anything the matter with you?"

"The matter with me?"

"I mean like being ill or worried. I wondered if there might be; I
had a sudden fancy; and that, I think, is really why I came up."

"There isn't, indeed; I'm all right. But your sudden fancies are
inspirations."

"It's absurd. You must excuse me. Good-by!" said Mrs. Ryves.

"What are the words you want changed?" Baron asked.

"I don't want any--if you're all right. Good-by," his visitor
repeated, fixing her eyes an instant on an object on his desk that
had caught them. His own glanced in the same direction and he saw
that in his hurry to shuffle away the packets found in the davenport
he had overlooked one of them, which lay with its seals exposed. For
an instant he felt found out, as if he had been concerned in
something to be ashamed of, and it was only his quick second thought
that told him how little the incident of which the packet was a
sequel was an affair of Mrs. Ryves's. Her conscious eyes came back
to his as if they were sounding them, and suddenly this instinct of
keeping his discovery to himself was succeeded by a really startled
inference that, with the rarest alertness, she had guessed something
and that her guess (it seemed almost supernatural), had been her real
motive. Some secret sympathy had made her vibrate--had touched her
with the knowledge that he had brought something to light. After an
instant he saw that she also divined the very reflection he was then