Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/384

374 and he might look over my shoulder any minute and read your letter."

This was the way the thing had lain in Sue's mind. Tom's speech in the morning had startled her very much by its revelation that at some time or other, if not now, he had felt a jealousy of Professor Balloure's regard for her. If he had that feeling, nothing could so strengthen it as this sort of light reference which Bell seemed to be inclined to make to her old notion that Sue would have married the professor.

"I can't have Tom hurt by such things being said," thought Sue. "Bell might know better than to write so: she always was thoughtless. Why, if he feels sensitive on the subject now, one such speech as that of Bell's might make him believe all his life that I had married him, loving some one else better," and so Sue wrote that fatal sentence: "Do be careful what you write."

Tom sat still a long time looking at the words.

"So there are secrets in connection with Edward Balloure," he thought, "which I am not to know." The blow was a more terrible one to Tom, from the fact that one of Sue's greatest charms to him was the frankness, the bold truthfulness, of her character. Tom's long experience as a lawyer had made him distrustful of average women. In Sue, he had thought he had found one who was incapable of deceit; and here she was not only concealing