a seeming
compliment.

"I have suffered so many wrongs at your hands that I can not wonder at
suffering this one more."

Then slowly and with a short look at her: "The woman who has queened it
so long in C---- society can not wish to undergo the charge of bigamy?"

"You will bring such a charge?"

"Certainly, if she does not voluntarily quit her false position, and,
accepting the protection of the man whose name is really hers, go from
this house at once."

At this alternative, uttered with icy deliberation, Mrs. Packard
recoiled with a sharp cry; but the mayor thrust a sudden sarcastic query
at his opponent:

"Which name? Steele or Brainard? You acknowledged both."

"My real name is Brainard; therefore, it is also hers. But I shall be
content if she will take my present one of Steele. More than that, I
shall be content if she will honestly accept from my hands a place of
refuge where I swear she shall remain unmolested by me till this matter
can be legally settled. I do not wish to make myself hateful to her, for
I anticipate the day when she will be my wife in heart as she is now in
law."

"Never!"

The word rang out in true womanly revolt. "I will die before that day
ever comes to separate me from the man I love and the child who calls
me mother. You may force me from this house, you may plunge me into
poverty, into contumely, but you shall never make me look upon myself as
other than the wife of this good man, whom I have wronged but will never
disgrace."

"Madam," declared the inflexible secretary with a derisive appreciation
which bowed her once proud head upon her shamed breast, "you are all I
thought you when I took you from Crabbe's back-pantry in Boone to make
you the honor and glory of a life which I knew then, as well as I do
now, would not long run in obscure channels."

It was a sarcasm calculated to madden the proud man who, only a few
minutes before, had designated the object of it by the sacred name of
wife. But beyond a hasty glance at the woman it had bowed almost to
the ground, the mayor gave no evidence of feeling either its force or
assumption. Other thoughts were in his mind than those roused by jealous
anger. "How old were you then?" he demanded with alarming incongruity.
The secretary started. He answered, however, calmly enough:

"I? Seven years ago I was twenty-five. I am thirty-two now."

"So I have heard you say. A man of twenty-five is old enough to have
made a record, Mr.