changing expression, before she
made the slightest gesture which allowed me to secure what I felt to be
the most valuable acquisition in the present exigency.

Then she turned to her telegram. It was from her husband, and I was not
prepared for the cry of dismay which left her lips as she read it, nor
for the increased excitement into which she was thrown by its few and
seemingly simple words.

With apparent forgetfulness of what had just occurred--a forgetfulness
which insensibly carried her back to the moment when she had given me
some order which involved my departure from the room--she impetuously
called out over her shoulder which she had turned on opening her
telegram:

"Miss Saunders! Miss Saunders! are you there? Bring me the morning
papers; bring me the morning papers!"

Instantly I remembered that we had not read the papers. Contrary to our
usual habit we had gone about a pressing piece of work without a glance
at any of the three dailies laid to hand in their usual place on the
library table. "They are here on the table," I replied, wondering as
much at the hectic flush which now enlivened her features as at the
extreme paleness that had marked them the moment before.

"Search them! There is something new in them about me. There must be.
Read Mr. Packard's message."

I took it from her hand; only eight words in all.

Here they are--the marks of separation being mine:

I am coming--libel I know--where is S.
Henry.

"Search the columns," she repeated, as I laid the telegram down.
"Search! Search!"

I hastily obeyed. But it took me some time to find the paragraph I
sought. The certainty that others in the house had read these papers,
if we had not, disturbed me. I recalled certain glances which I had seen
pass between the servants behind Mrs. Packard's back,--glances which
I had barely noted at the time, but which returned to my mind now with
forceful meaning; and if these busy girls had read, all the town had
read--what? Suddenly I found it. She saw my eyes stop in their hurried
scanning and my fingers clutch the sheet more firmly, and, drawing up
behind me, she attempted to follow with her eyes the words I reluctantly
read out. Here they are, just as they left my trembling lips that
day--words that only the most rabid of opponents could have instigated:

Apropos of the late disgraceful discoveries, by which a woman
of apparent means and unsullied hon