But Nixon was in the open doorway and Nixon was speaking: “A telegram, your Honor.” The old man spoke briskly, even a little crisply--perhaps he always did when he addressed the mayor. But his eyes roamed eagerly and changed to a burning, red color when they fell upon the dejected figure of his mistress. I fancied that, had he dared, he would have leaped into the room and taken his own part--and who could rightly gage what that was?--in the scene which may have been far more comprehensive to him than to me. But he did not dare, and my eyes passed from him to the mayor. “From Haines,” that gentleman announced, forgetting the suggestive discovery he had just made in the great and absorbing interest of his campaign. “‘Speech good--great applause becoming thunderous at flash of your picture. All right so far if--’” he read out, ceasing abruptly at the “if” which, as I afterward understood, really ended the message. “No answer,” he explained to Nixon as he hurriedly, dismissed him. “That ‘if’ concerns you,” he now declared, coming back to his wife and to his troubles at the same instant. “Explain the mystery which seems likely to undo me. Why do you sit there bowed under my accusations? Why should Henry Packard’s wife cry for mercy, to any man? Because those damnable accusations are true? Because you have a secret in your past and this man knows it?” Slowly she rose, slowly she met his eyes, and even he started back at her pallor and the drawn misery in her face. But she did not speak. Instead of that she simply reached out and laid her hand on Mr. Steele’s arm, drooping almost to the ground as she did so. “Mercy!” she suddenly wailed, but this time to the man who had so relentlessly accused her. The effect was appalling. The mayor reeled, then sprang forward with his hand outstretched for his secretary’s throat. But his words were for his wife. “What does this mean? Why do you take your stand by the side of another man than myself? What have I done or what have you done that I should live to face such an abomination as this?” It was Steele who answered, with a lift of his head as full of assertion as it was of triumph. “You? nothing; she? everything. You do not know this woman, Mayor Packard; for instance, you do not know her name.” “Not know her name? My wife’s?” “Not in the least. This lady’s name is Brainard. So is mine. Though she has lived with you several years in ignorance of my continued existence, no doubt, she is my wife and not yours. We were married in Boone, Minnesota, six years ago.” CHAPTER XXIII. THE WIFE’S TALE Ten minutes later this woman was pleading her cause. She had left the side of the man who had just assumed the greatest of all rights over her and was standing in a frenzy of appeal before him she loved so deeply and yet had apparently wronged.