"No," I muttered in quick dissuasion, to myself.

"He must see that I can do two things at once and do both well." And so I went on with the letter.
"When," I asked, "did you first see the change in Mrs.Packard ?" "On Tuesday afternoon at about this time." "What had happened on that day?
Had she been out ?" "Yes, I think she told me later that she had been out." "Do you know where ?" "To some concert, I believe.

I did not press her with questions, Miss Saunders; I am a poor inquisitor." Click, click; the machine was working admirably.
"Have you reason to think," I now demanded, "that she brought her unhappiness in with her, when she returned from that concert ?" "No; for when I returned home myself, as I did earlier than usual that night, I heard her laughing with the child in the nursery.

It was afterward, some few minutes afterward, that I came upon her sitting in such a daze of misery, that she did not recognize me when I spoke to her.

I thought it was a passing mood at the time; she is a sensitive woman and she had been reading--I saw the book lying on the floor at her side; but when, having recovered from her dejection--a dejection, mind you, which she would neither acknowledge nor explain--she accompanied me out to dinner, she showed even more feeling on our return, shrinking unaccountably from leaving the carriage and showing, not only in this way but in others, a very evident distaste to reenter her own house.
Now, whatever hold I still retain upon her is of so slight a nature that I am afraid every day she will leave me." "Leave you!" My fingers paused; my astonishment had got the better of me.
"Yes; it is as bad as that.