I was too much overwhelmed by all these events to close my eyes that night.  The revelation of Mr. Steele’s further duplicity, coming so immediately upon the first, roused fresh surmises and awakened thoughts which soon set my wits working in a direction as new as it was unexpected.  I had believed my work over in this house, but as I recalled all the occurrences of the evening and turned the situation, as it now confronted me, over and over in my mind, I felt that it had just begun.  There must be something in this latest development to help us in the struggle which lay before us.  The rage which sprang up in him as he confronted his old aunt at this moment of his triumphant revenge argued a weakness in his armor which it might yet be my part to discover and reveal.  I knew Mrs. Packard well enough to realize that the serenity into which she had fallen was a fictitious serenity, and must remain so as long as any doubt remained of the legality of the tie uniting her to this handsome fiend.  Were the means suggested by the mayor of promising enough character to accomplish the looked-for end?

I remembered the man’s eyes as the mayor let fall his word of powerful threat, and doubted it.  Once recovered from the indisposition which now weakened him, he would find means to thwart any attempts made by Mayor Packard to undermine the position he had taken as the legal husband of Olympia—­sufficiently so, at least, to hinder happiness between the pair whose wedded life he not only envied but was determined to break up, unless some flaw in his past could be discovered through Miss Quinlan—­the aunt whose goodness he had slighted and who now seemed to be in a frame of mind to help our cause if its pitiful aspects were once presented to her.  I resolved to present the case without delay.  Morning came at last, and I refreshed myself as well as I could, and, after a short visit to Mrs. Packard’s bedside during which my purpose grew with every moment I gazed down on her brave but pitiful face, put on my hat and jacket and went next door.

I found the two old ladies seated in their state apartment making calculations.  At sight of my face they both rose and the “O my dear” from Miss Charity and the “God bless you, child,” from Miss Thankful showed that both hearts were yet warm.  Gradually I introduced the topic of their nephew; gradually I approached the vital question of the disgrace.

The result upset all my growing hopes.  He had never told them just what the disgrace was.  They really knew nothing about his life after his early boyhood.  He had come home that one time when fortune so suddenly smiled upon them and they thought then that he would tell them something; but the disappointment which had followed effectually closed his lips, and he went away after a few days of fruitless search, not to approach them again till just before he took up the position of secretary to their great neighbor.  Then he paid them one