He turned from hanging up his overcoat, and gave me a short stare.
“A laugh!” he repeated. “Who could have laughed like that? We are not a very jolly crowd here.”
“I don’t know, sir. I thought it must have been either Mr. Steele or Nixon, the butler, but each denied it. There was no one else in this part of the house.”
“Mrs. Packard is very sensitive just now,” he remarked. Then as he turned away toward the library door: “I will throw myself on a lounge. I have but an hour or two before me, as I have my preparations to make for leaving town on the early morning train. I shall have some final instructions to give you.”
CHAPTER VIII. THE PARAGRAPH
I was up betimes. Would Mrs. Packard appear at breakfast? I hardly thought so. Yet who knows? Such women have great recuperative powers, and from one so mysteriously affected anything might be expected. Ready at eight, I hastened down to the second floor to find the lady, concerning whom I had had these doubts, awaiting me on the threshold of her room. She was carefully dressed and looked pale enough to have been up for hours. An envelope was in her hand, and the smile which hailed my approach was cold and constrained.
“Good morning,” said she. “Let us go down. Let us go down together. I slept wretchedly and do not feel very strong. When did Mr. Packard come in?”
“Late. He went directly to the library. He said that he had but a short time in which to rest, and would take what sleep he could get on the lounge, when I told him of your very natural nervous attack.”
She sighed—a sigh which came from no inconsiderable depths—then with a proud and resolute gesture preceded me down-stairs.