Nevertheless, even now, it was not distrust of his wife that was busy at his mind--he was too fond of her and too proud of her to feel it--the sensation was more like uneasy surprise.

He longed to go and question her, and get a satisfactory answer, and have done with it.

But there was a voice speaking within him that had never made itself heard before--a voice with a persistent warning in it, that said, Wait; and look at your letters first.
He spread them out on the table with hands that trembled he knew not why.

Among them was the back number of the _Times_ for which he had written to London, with a letter from the publisher explaining the means by which the copy had been procured.
He opened the newspaper with a vague feeling of alarm at finding that those letters to the editor which he had been so eager to read, and that perfecting of the mutilated volume which he had been so anxious to accomplish, had become objects of secondary importance in his mind.

An inexplicable curiosity about the general contents of the paper was now the one moving influence which asserted itself within him, he spread open the broad sheet on the table.
The first page on which his eye fell was the page on the right-hand side.