“You had some words then with this Brainard—­I think you called him Brainard—­exacted some promise from him?”

“Yes, your Honor,” was the only reply.

Did not Mrs. Packard speak, too?  We all seemed to think so, for we turned toward her; but she gave no evidence of having said anything, though an increased nervousness was visible in her fingers as she pushed the matches about.

“I thought I was warranted in doing so much,” continued Mr. Steele.  “I could not buy the man with money, so I used threats.”

“Right! anything to squelch him,” exclaimed the mayor, but not with the vigor I expected from him.  Some doubt, some dread—­caught perhaps from his wife’s attitude or expression—­seemed to interpose between his indignation and the object of it.  “You are our good friend, Steele, in spite of the shock you gave us a moment ago.”

As no answer was made to this beyond a smile too subtle and too fine to be understood by his openhearted chief, the mayor proceeded to declare: 

“Then that matter is at an end.  I pray that it may have done us no real harm.  I do not think it has.  People resent attacks on women, especially, on one whose reputation has never known a shadow, as girl, wife, or mother.”

“Yes,” came in slow assent from the lips which had just smiled, and he glanced at Mrs. Packard whose own lips seemed suddenly to become dry, for I saw her try to moisten them as her right hand groped about for something on the tabletop and finally settled on a small paper-weight which she set down amongst her matches.  Was it then or afterward that I began to have my first real doubt whether some shadow had not fallen across her apparently unsullied life?

“Yes, you are right,” repeated Mr. Steele more energetically.  “People do resent such insinuations against a woman, though I remember one case where the opposite effect was produced.  It was when Collins ran for supervisor in Cleveland.  He was a good fellow himself, and he had a wife who was all that was beautiful and charming, but who had once risked her reputation in an act which did call for public arraignment.  Unfortunately, there was a man who knew of this act and he published it right and left and—­”

“Olympia!” Mayor Packard was on his feet, pointing in sudden fury and suspicion at the table where the matches lay about in odd and, as I now saw, seemingly set figures.  “You are doing something besides playing with those matches.  I know Mr. Steele’s famous cipher; he showed it to me a week ago; and so, evidently, do you, in spite of the fact that you have had barely fifty words with him since he came to the house.  Let me read—­ah!—­give over that piece of paper you have there, Steele, if you would not have me think you as great a dastard as we know that Brainard to be!”

And while his wife drooped before his eyes and a cynical smile crept about the secretary’s fine mouth, he caught up the sheet on which Steele had been playing tit-tat-to with the child, and glanced from the table to it and back again to the table on which the matches lay in the following device, the paper-weight answering for the dot: