fail of being more or less concealed by
the curtain, and though I heard the paper rattle I could not see it
or the hand which held it. But the time she spent over it seemed
interminable before I heard her utter a sharp cry and saw the curtains
shake as she clutched them.

It seemed the proper moment to proffer help, but before either Letty or
I could start forward, her command rang out in smothered but peremptory
tones:

"Keep back! I want no one here!" and we stopped, each looking at the
other in very natural consternation. And when, after another seemingly
interminable interval, she finally stepped forth, I noted a haggard
change in her face, and that her coat had been torn open and even the
front of her dress wrenched apart as if she felt herself suffocating,
or as if--but this alternative only suggested itself to me later and I
shall refrain from mentioning it now.

Crossing the floor with a stumbling step, with the paper which had
roused all this indignation still in her hand, she paused before the now
seriously alarmed Letty, and demanded in great excitement:

"Who pinned that paper on my child? You know; you saw it done. Was it a
man or--"

"Oh no, ma'am, no, ma'am," protested the girl. "No man came near her. It
was a woman--a nice-looking woman."

"A woman!"

Mrs. Packard's tone was incredulous. But the girl insisted.

"Yes, ma'am; there was no man there at all. I was on one of the park
benches resting, with the baby in my arms, and this woman passed by
and saw us. She smiled at the baby's ways, and then stopped and took
to talking about her,--how pretty she was and how little afraid of
strangers. I saw no harm in the woman, ma'am, and let her sit down on
the same bench with me for a few minutes. She must have pinned the
paper on the baby's coat then, for it was the only time anybody was near
enough to do it."

Mrs. Packard, with an irrepressible gesture of anger or dismay, turned
and walked back to the window. The movement was a natural one. Certainly
she was excusable for wishing to hide from the girl the full extent of
the agitation into which this misadventure had thrown her.

"You may go." The words came after a moment of silent suspense. "Give
the baby her supper--I know that you will never let any one else come so
near her again."

Letty probably did not catch the secret anguish hidden in her tone, but
I did, and after the nurse-maid was gone, I waited anxiously for what
Mrs. Packard would