And though she did not know I saw it, she withdrew the key and slipped it into her pocket. “This is Nixon’s night out,” she murmured, as she led the way to the library. “Ellen will wait on us and we’ll have the baby down and play games and be as merry as ever we can be,—to keep the ghosts away,” she cried in fresh, defiant tones that had just the faintest suggestion of hysteria in them. “We shall succeed; I don’t mean to think of it again. I’m right in that, am I not? You look as if you thought so. Ah, Mr. Packard was kind to secure me such a companion. I must prove my gratitude to him by keeping you close to me. It was a mistake to have those light-headed women visit me to-day. They tired more than they comforted me.”
I smiled, and put the question which concerned me most nearly.
“Does Nixon stay late when he goes out?”
She threw herself into a chair and took up her embroidery.
“He will to-night,” was her answer. “A little grandniece of his is coming on a late train from Pittsburgh. I don’t think the train is due till midnight, and after that he’s got to take her to his daughter’s on Carey Street. It will be one o’clock at least before he can be back.”
I hid my satisfaction. Fate was truly auspicious. I would make good use of his absence. There was nobody else in the house whose surveillance I feared.
“Pray send for the baby now,” I exclaimed. “I am eager to begin our merry evening.”
She smiled and rang the bell for Letty, the nurse.
Late that night I left my room and stole softly down-stairs. Mrs. Packard had ordered a bed made up for herself in the nursery and had retired early. So had Ellen and Letty. The house was therefore clear below stairs, and after I had passed the second story I felt myself removed from all human presence as though I were all alone in the house.
This was a relief to me, yet the experience was not a happy one. Ellen had asked permission to leave the light burning in the hall during the mayor’s absence, so the way was plain enough before me; but no parlor floor looks inviting after twelve o’clock at night, and this one held a secret as yet unsolved, which did not add to its comfort or take the mysterious threat from the shadows lurking in corners and under stairways which I had to pass. As I hurried past the place where the clock had once stood, I thought of the nurses’ story and of the many frightened hearts which had throbbed on the stairway I had just left and between the walls I was fast approaching; but I did not turn back. That would have been an acknowledgment of the truth of what I was at this very time exerting my full faculties to disprove.