Her increased spirits and more natural conduct were the theme of the few sentences he addressed me, and while he urged precaution and a continued watch upon his wife, he expressed the fondest hope that he should find her fully restored on his return at the end of two weeks.

I encouraged his hopes, and possibly shared them; but I changed my mind, as he probably did his, when a few minutes later we met her in the hall hurrying toward us with a newspaper in her hand and a ghastly look on her face.  “See! see! what they have dared to print!” she cried, with a look, full of anguish, into his bewildered face.

He took the sheet, read, and flushed, then suddenly grew white.  “Outrageous!” he exclaimed.  Then tenderly, “My poor darling! that they should dare to drag your name into this abominable campaign!”

“And for no reason,” she faltered; “there is nothing wrong with me.  You believe that; you are sure of that,” she cried.  I saw the article later.  It ran something like this: 

“Rumor has it that not even our genial mayor’s closet is free from the proverbial skeleton.  Mrs. Packard’s health is not what it was,—­and some say that the causes are not purely physical.”

He tried to dissimulate.  Putting his arm about her, he kissed her fondly and protested with mingled energy and feeling: 

“I believe you to be all you should be—­a true woman and true wife.”

Her face lighted and she clung for a moment in passionate delight to his breast; then she caught his look, which was tender but not altogether open, and the shadows fell again as she murmured: 

“You are not satisfied.  Oh, what do you see, what do others see, that I should be the subject of doubt?  Tell me!  I can never right myself till I know.”

“I see a troubled face when I should see a happy one,” he answered lightly; then, as she still clung in very evident question to his arm, he observed gravely:  “Two weeks ago you were the life of this house, and of every other house into which your duties carried you.  Why shouldn’t you be the same to-day?  Answer me that, dear, and all my doubts will vanish, I assure you.”

“Henry,”—­drooping her head and lacing her fingers in and out with nervous hesitation,—­“you will think me very foolish,—­I know that it will sound foolish, childish even, and utterly ridiculous; but I can explain myself no other way.  I have had a frightful experience—­here—­in my own house—­on the spot where I have been so happy, so unthinkingly happy.  Henry—­do not laugh—­it is real, very real, to me.  The specter which is said to haunt these walls has revealed itself to me.  I have seen the ghost.”

CHAPTER IX

SCRAPS

We did not laugh; we did not even question her sanity; at least I did not; there was too much meaning in her manner.

“A specter,” her husband repeated with a suggestive glance at the brilliant sunshine in which we all stood.