As she did so her eyes lit on the hall table, and there lay a gray envelope, her husband’s name faintly traced on it. “Oh!” she cried out, suddenly aware that for the first time in months she had entered her house without wondering if one of the gray letters would be there.

            “What is it, my dear?” Mrs. Ashby asked with a glance of surprise.

            Charlotte did not answer. She took up the envelope and stood staring at it as if she could force her gaze to penetrate to what was within. Then an idea occurred to her. She turned and held out the envelope to her mother-in-law.

            “Do you know that writing?” she asked.

            Mrs. Ashby took the letter. She had to feel with her other hand for her eyeglasses, and when she had adjusted them she lifted the envelope to the light. “Why!” she exclaimed; and then stopped. Charlotte noticed that the letter shook in her usually firm hand. “But this is addressed to Kenneth,” Mrs. Ashby said at length, in a low voice. Her tone seemed to imply that she felt her daughter-in-law’s question to be slightly indiscreet.

            “Yes, but no matter,” Charlotte spoke with sudden decision. “I want to know—do you know the writing?”

            Mrs. Ashby handed back the letter. “No,” she said distinctly.

            The two women had turned into the library. Charlotte switched on the electric light and shut the door. She still held the envelope in her hand.

            “I’m going to open it,” she announced.

            She caught her mother-in-law’s startled glance. “But, dearest—a letter not addressed to you? My dear, you can’t!”

            “As if I cared about that—now!” She continued to look intently at Mrs. Ashby. “This letter may tell me where Kenneth is.”

            Mrs. Ashby’s glossy bloom was effaced by a quick pallor; her firm cheeks seemed to shrink and wither. “Why should it? What makes you believe—It can’t possibly—”

            Charlotte held her eyes steadily on that altered face. “Ah, then you do know the writing?” she flashed back.

            “Know the writing? How should I? With all my son’s correspondents… What I do know is—” Mrs. Ashby broke off and looked at her daughter-in-law entreatingly, almost timidly.

            Charlotte caught her by the wrist. “Mother! What do you know? Tell me! You must!”

            “That I don’t believe any good ever came of a woman’s opening her husband’s letters behind his back.”

            The words sounded to Charlotte’s irritated ears as flat as a phrase culled from a book of moral axioms. She laughed impatiently and dropped her mother-in-law’s wrist. “Is that all? No good can come of this letter, opened or unopened. I know that well enough. But whatever ill comes, I mean to find out what’s in it.” Her hands had been trembling as they held the envelope, but now they grew firm, and her voice also. She still gazed intently at Mrs. Ashby. “This is the ninth letter addressed in the same hand that has come for Kenneth since we’ve been married.