man who has wrung my heart in his hand of
steel,--wrung it and thrown it away."

Sobs shook her and she stopped from lack of power to utter either her
terror or her grief. But she looked the questions she could no longer
put, and compassionating her misery, I gently said:

"Your love has been fixed upon a very unstable heart; but you have
rights which must yet insure you his support. There is some one who will
protect these rights and protect you in your efforts to substantiate
them."

"His aunt," she put in, shaking her head. "She can do nothing, unless--"
Her excitement became abnormal. "Have they found the money?" she
shrieked; "have they--have they found the money?"

I could not deceive her; she had seen it in my eye.

"And they will--"

"Hardly," I whispered. "He has displeased them; they can not be generous
to him now."

Her hopes sank as if the very basis of her life had been taken away.

"It was my only hope," she murmured. "With that money in my hand--some,
any of it, I could have dared his frown and won in a little while his
good will, but now--I can only anticipate rebuff. There is nothing for
me to hope for now. I must continue to be Bess, the thread and needle
woman."

"I did not say that the one to reinstate you was Miss Quinlan."

"Who then? who then?"

"Mayor Packard."

And then I had to tell her.

We all know the results of the election by which Governor Packard holds
his seat, but few persons outside of those mentioned in this history
know why the event of his homecoming from a trip he made to Minnesota
brought a brighter and more lasting light into his wife's eyes than the
news of his astonishing political triumph.

He had substantiated facts by which Mr. Steele's claims upon Mrs.
Packard were annulled and Bess restored to her rights, if not to her
false husband's heart and affections. There are times, though, when I
do not even despair of the latter; constant illness is producing a
perceptible change in the man, and it seemed to me, from what Mrs. John
Brainard told me one day after she had been able, through the kindness
of the Misses Quinlan, to place the amount of one of the bonds in his
hands, that his eyes were beginning to learn their true lesson and that
he would yet find charm in his long neglected wife. It was not to be
wondered at, for with hope and the advantages of dress with which the
Misses Quinlan now took pleasure in supplying her, she was gradually
becoming an unus