“I’d like ten minutes as soon as possible,” he said. “I have an important communication to make.” “I’ll hear it now.” To the typewriter: “You can go. Don’t return until I ring, and tell Tom to stand in front of the door and admit no one.—Well, what is it?” “Have you made up your mind to publish that Westchester County scandal?” “How do you know anything about that?” “They sent for me yesterday and besought me to use my influence with you. I am engaged to the woman’s sister.” “The devil you are! This is bad—bad. But I can’t do anything. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for that story.” “I know you did. If I could give you a better, would you let that go?” “Wouldn’t I? It’s a white elephant. I thought you didn’t know me so little as to come here with sentiment. Fire away.” “Of course you remember the Gardiner Peeles, although you never go anywhere. You went to one or two children’s parties there when you were a kid. Well, Beverly Peele died suddenly night before last, supposedly of an overdose of morphine administered by himself. Now, old Lewis, the family physician, is a great friend of mine, and likely to be communicative in his cups. Last night he dined with me, and after he was pretty well loaded told me a remarkable yarn. It seems that Mrs. Beverly had not been on good terms with her husband since the early days of their marriage, and had threatened to leave him from time to time. He treated her well, and was desperately in love with her. She, as far as is known, had nothing against him but personal dislike. She is said to have frequently expressed hatred of him in violent terms. Well, winter before last she left him, came to New York, and went to work on the ‘Day.’ The Peeles did everything to induce her to return, but she only consented to go back temporarily this summer to nurse her husband, who had been attacked with a chronic but not immediately fatal complaint. Meanwhile it seems she had fallen in love with some one, and she met him every Thursday in a wood. Jim, a stable boy, who had been brought up on the place and was devoted to Beverly Peele, watched her, but said nothing to his master, as he was cautiously waiting for some proof of criminality. On the afternoon of Peele’s death there was a tremendous scene between the lovers: young Mrs. Peele telling a furious story of her husband’s refusal to give her divorce, of his threat to have her watched, to expose her if she took a lover, and to live until ninety if he had to go abroad and live at a foreign spa. She reiterated that she hated him, and had frequently had the impulse to murder him. The lover invited her to go to Texas, and she demurred, as she disliked scandal. Jim told this story to Lewis when driving him home from the death-bed,—his own horse had cast a shoe,—and the doctor advised him to keep quiet.