Seemingly Mayor Packard did not wish this young man to know my
position in the house. Was it possible he did not wholly trust
him? My hands trembled from the machine and I was about to turn
and give my full thought to what I had to say. But pride checked
the impulse. "No," I muttered in quick dissuasion, to myself.
"He must see that I can do two things at once and do both well."
And so I went on with the letter.

"When," I asked, "did you first see the change in Mrs. Packard?"

"On Tuesday afternoon at about this time."

"What had happened on that day? Had she been out?"

"Yes, I think she told me later that she had been out."

"Do you know where?"

"To some concert, I believe. I did not press her with questions,
Miss Saunders; I am a poor inquisitor."

Click, click; the machine was working admirably.

"Have you reason to think," I now demanded, "that she brought her
unhappiness in with her, when she returned from that concert?"

"No; for when I returned home myself, as I did earlier than
usual that night, I heard her laughing with the child in the
nursery. It was afterward, some few minutes afterward, that I