“I have talked with her physician.  He says there is something serious the matter with her, but he can not help her, as it is not in any respect physical, and advises me to find out what is on her mind.  As if that had not been my first care!  I have also consulted her most intimate friends, all who know her well, but they can give me no clue to her distress.  They see the difference in her, but can not tell the cause.  And I am obliged to go away and leave her in this state.  For two weeks, three weeks now, my movements will be very uncertain.  I am at the beck and call of the State Committee.  At any other time I would try change of scene, but she will neither consent to leave home without me nor to interrupt my plans in order that I may accompany her.”

“Miss Davies has not told me your name,” I made bold to interpolate.

He stared, shook himself together, and quietly, remarked: 

“I am Henry Packard.”

The city’s mayor! and not only that, the running candidate for governor.  I knew him well by name, even if I did not know, or rather had not recognized his face.

“I beg pardon,” I somewhat tremulously began, but he waved the coming apology aside as easily, as he had my first attempt at ingratiation.  In fact, he appeared to be impatient of every unnecessary word.  This I could, in a dim sort of way, understand.  He was at the crisis of his fate, and so was his party.  For several years a struggle had gone on between the two nearly matched elements in this western city, which, so far, had resulted in securing him two terms of office—­possibly because his character appealed to men of all grades and varying convictions.  But the opposite party was strong in the state, and the question whether he could carry his ticket against such odds, and thus give hope to his party in the coming presidential election, was one yet to be tested.  Forceful as a speaker, he was expected to reap hundreds of votes from the mixed elements that invariably thronged to hear him, and, ignorant as I necessarily was of the exigencies of such a campaign, I knew that not only his own ambition, but the hopes of his party, depended on the speeches he had been booked to make in all parts of the state.  And now, three weeks before election, while every opposing force was coming to the surface, this trouble had come upon him.  A mystery in his home and threatened death in his heart!  For he loved his wife—­that was apparent to me from the first; loved her to idolatry, as such men sometimes do love,—­ often to their own undoing.

All this, the thought of an instant.  Meanwhile he had been studying me well.

“You understand my position,” he commented.  “Wednesday night I speak in C—–­, Thursday, in R—–­, while she—­” With an effort he pulled himself together.  “Miss—­”

“Saunders,” I put in.

“Miss Saunders, I can not leave her alone in the house.  Some one must be there to guard and watch—­”