erward understood, really ended the message.
"No answer," he explained to Nixon as he hurriedly, dismissed him. "That
'if' concerns you," he now declared, coming back to his wife and to his
troubles at the same instant. "Explain the mystery which seems likely
to undo me. Why do you sit there bowed under my accusations? Why should
Henry Packard's wife cry for mercy, to any man? Because those damnable
accusations are true? Because you have a secret in your past and this
man knows it?"

Slowly she rose, slowly she met his eyes, and even he started back at
her pallor and the drawn misery in her face. But she did not speak.
Instead of that she simply reached out and laid her hand on Mr. Steele's
arm, drooping almost to the ground as she did so. "Mercy!" she suddenly
wailed, but this time to the man who had so relentlessly accused her.
The effect was appalling. The mayor reeled, then sprang forward with his
hand outstretched for his secretary's throat. But his words were for his
wife. "What does this mean? Why do you take your stand by the side of
another man than myself? What have I done or what have you done that I
should live to face such an abomination as this?"

It was Steele who answered, with a lift of his head as full of assertion
as it was of triumph.

"You? nothing; she? everything. You do not know this woman, Mayor
Packard; for instance, you do not know her name."

"Not know her name? My wife's?"

"Not in the least. This lady's name is Brainard. So is mine. Though she
has lived with you several years in ignorance of my continued existence,
no doubt, she is my wife and not yours. We were married in Boone,
Minnesota, six years ago."

CHAPTER XXIII. THE WIFE'S TALE

Ten minutes later this woman was pleading her cause. She had left the
side of the man who had just assumed the greatest of all rights over her
and was standing in a frenzy of appeal before him she loved so deeply
and yet had apparently wronged.

Mayor Packard was sitting with his head in his hands in the chair into
which he had dropped when the blow fell which laid waste his home, his
life, the future of his child and possibly the career which was as much,
perhaps more, to him than all these. He had not uttered a word since
that dreadful moment. To all appearance her moans of contrition fell
upon deaf ears, and she had reached the crisis of her misery without
knowing the extent of the condemnation hidden in his persistent silence.
Collaps