The mayor showed impatience.  “Oh, I can not bother with such nonsense as that,” he declared; “the situation is too serious.”

I thought so, too, when in another moment his wife’s door opened and she stepped out upon the landing to meet him.  Her eyes fell on Mr. Steele, standing at the foot of the stairs, before they encountered her husband; and though she uttered no cry and hardly paused in her approach toward the mayor, I saw the heart within her die as suddenly and surely as the flame goes out in a gust of wind.

“You!” There was hysteria in the cry.  Pray God that the wild note in it was not that of incipient insanity!  “How good of you to give up making your great speech to-night, just to see how I have borne this last outrage!  You do see, don’t you?” Here she drew her form to its full height.  “My husband believes in me, and it gives me courage to face the whole world.  Ah! is that Mr. Steele I see below there?  Pardon me, Mr. Steele, if I show surprise.  We heard a false report of your illness this afternoon.  Henry, hadn’t Mr. Steele better come up-stairs?  I presume you are here to talk over this last dreadful paragraph with me.”

“It is not necessary for Mr. Steele to join us if you do not wish him to,” I heard the mayor whisper in his wife’s ear.

“Oh, I do not mind,” she returned with an indifference whose reality I probably gauged more accurately than he did.

“That is good.”  And he called Mr. Steele up.  “You see she is reasonable enough,” he muttered in my ear as he motioned me to follow them into the up-stairs sitting-room to which she had led the way.  “The more heads the better in a discussion of this kind,” was the excuse he gave his wife and Mr. Steele as he ushered me in.

As neither answered, I considered my presence accepted and sat down in as remote a corner as offered.  Verily the fates were active in my behalf.

Mayor Packard was about to close the door, when Mrs. Packard suddenly leaped by him with the cry: 

“There’s the baby!  She must have heard your voice.”  And rushing into the hall she came back with the child whom she immediately placed in its father’s arms.  Then she slowly seated herself.  Not until she had done so did she turn to Mr. Steele.

“Sit,” said she, with a look and gesture her husband would have marveled at had he not been momentarily occupied with the prattling child.

The secretary bowed and complied.  Surely men of such great personal attractions are few.  Instantly the light, shaded though it seemingly was in all directions, settled on his face, making him, to my astonished gaze, the leading personality in the group.  Was this on account of the distinction inherent in extreme beauty or because of a new and dominating expression which had insensibly crept into his features?

The mayor, and the mayor only, seemed oblivious to the fact.  Glancing up from the child, he opened the conference by saying:  “Tell Mrs. Packard, Steele, what you have just told me.”