You are very desirous that Mr.Packard should win in this election ?" "I am his secretary, and was largely instrumental in securing his nomination for governor," was the simple reply.

There was a pause--how filled, I would have given half my expected salary to know.

Then I heard her ask him the very question she had asked me.
"Do you think that in the event of your not succeeding in forcing an apology from the man who inserted that objectionable paragraph against myself--that--that such hints of something being wrong with me will in any way affect Mr.Packard's chances--lose him votes, I mean?
Will the husband suffer because of some imagined lack in his wife ?" "One can not say." Thus appealed to, the man seemed to weigh his words carefully, out of consideration for her, I thought.

"No real admirer of the mayor's would go over to the enemy from any such cause as that.
Only the doubtful--the half-hearted--those who are ready to grasp at any excuse for voting with the other party, would allow a consideration of the mayor's domestic relations to interfere with their confidence in him as a public officer." "But these--" How I wish I could have seen her face! "These half-hearted voters, their easily stifled convictions are what make majorities," she stammered.

Mr.Steele may have bowed; he probably did, for she went on confidently and with a certain authority not observable in the tone of her previous remarks.