The wife had looked on the previous scene in amazement and fear. The changing hues of her husband's countenance, the twitching of the muscles in his face, the spasmodic movement of his limbs, under suppressed rage, disgust, and dread, told her that the document she had seen handed to him was the premonitory note of something very dreadful. If she had not so well and thoroughly known the rectitude and honourableness of the father of her children, she might have jumped to the conclusion, in her bewilderment, that he had committed forgery, or murdered some one, and that the summons was a warrant for his apprehension on a charge that might have consigned him to Portland or led him to the gallows. The officer was the first to break silence. "It is a painful duty, sir." "Never mind. But what does this mean?" Mr. Delmar replied, rapidly passing from affected indifference to painful curiosity. "You see, sir, what it is," said the officer. Had Mr. Delmar's leg and boot been slighter than they were, a smile might have passed from the inner to the outer man of the speaker. "I know, sir, what it is," retorted Mr. Delmar; and summoning all his moral resolution, and lifting himself to a height of moral dignity, which perhaps he had never occupied in any one moment of his wedded life, from the day when in his young and pure manhood he had taken that woman, every way worthy, to be his partner and help-meet to the altar, he added: "I am very glad indeed, sir, for one thing only,--that I did not consent to see you, or accept at your hand this infamous paper, unknown to my wife." Still Mrs. Delmar was silent, bewildered, and intensely anxious. "I have done my duty," said the officer, in an apologetic tone, glancing at the door, as if desirous of withdrawing. "You may leave," said Mr. Delmar. I draw a veil over the scene which followed. It is enough, at all events, the reader should know that Mr. Delmar read the document to his wife, explained its exact purport, and craved her assistance in penetrating the mystery. He had no occasion to ask her whether she believed him guilty of the offence attributed to him. She volunteered an assurance of her belief in its untruthfulness. She felt and declared that it was the result of some awful mistake of personal identity, or some most foul conspiracy. It would be incorrect to say that the interchange of confidence did not leave a painful sense of the possible consequences of this mysterious incident; yet it may be affirmed that the event did not estrange a particle of that woman's love, nor for a moment excite in her breast one flimsy or evanescent doubt of the fidelity of her husband.