s she read
further, her vague disappointment gave way to a sudden breathless
incredulity; that to a heartsick rigidity of attention; and when she
went back, and began to read the whole article over, slowly and
carefully, from the beginning, her face was about the color of the
pretty white collar she wore. For what she was looking on at was, so it
seemed to her, not simply the killing of the chief ambition of her two
years' work, but the treacherous murder of it in the house of its
friends.

As she reread "As to the Reformatory," she became impressed by its
audacious cleverness. It would have been impossible to manage a
tremendous shift in position with more consummate dexterity. Indeed, she
was almost ready to take the _Post's_ word for it that no shift at all
had been made. From beginning to end the paper's unshakable loyalty to
the reformatory was everywhere insisted upon; that was the strong
keynote; the ruinous qualifications were slipped in, as it were,
reluctantly, hard-wrung concessions to indisputable and overwhelming
evidence. But there they were, scarcely noticeable to the casual reader,
perhaps, but to passionate partisans sticking up like palm-trees on a
plain. In a backhanded, sinuous but unmistakable way, the _Post_ was
telling the legislature that it had better postpone the reformatory for
another two years. It was difficult to say just what phrase or phrases
finally pushed the odious idea out into the light; but Sharlee lingered
longest on a passage which, after referring to the "list of inescapable
expenditures published elsewhere," said:

Immediacy, of course, was never the great question; but it was a
question; and the _Post_ has therefore watched with keen regret the
rolling up of absolutely unavoidable expenses to the point where
the spending of another dollar for any cause, however meritorious
in itself, must be regarded as of dubious wisdom.

That sentence was enough. It would be as good as a volume to the
powerful opposition in the House, hardly repressed heretofore by the
_Post's_ thunders. The reformatory, which they had labored for so long,
was dead.

The thought was bitter to the young assistant secretary. But from the
first, her mind had jumped beyond it, to fasten on another and, to her,
far worse one, a burning personal question by the side of which the loss
of the reformatory seemed for the moment an unimportant detail.

_Which of the two men had done it?_