When I joined Mrs. Packard I found her cheerful and in all respects quite unlike the brooding woman she had seemed when I first met her.  From the toys scattered about her feet I judged that the child had been with her, and certainly the light in her eyes had the beaming quality we associate with the happy mother.  She was beautiful thus and my hopes of her restoration to happiness rose.

“I have had a good night,” were her first words as she welcomed me to a seat in her own little nook.  “I’m feeling very well this morning.  That is why I have brought out this big piece of work.”  She held up a baby’s coat she was embroidering.  “I can not do it when I am nervous.  Are you ever nervous?”

Delighted to enter into conversation with her, I answered in a way to lead her to talk about herself, then, seeing she was in a favorable mood for gossip, was on the point of venturing all in a leading question, when she suddenly forestalled me by putting one to me.

“Were you ever the prey of an idea?” she asked; “one which you could not shake off by any ordinary means, one which clung to you night and day till nothing else seemed real or would rouse the slightest interest?  I mean a religious idea,” she stammered with anxious attempt of to hide her real thought.  “One of those doubts which come to you in the full swing of life to—­to frighten and unsettle you.”

“Yes,” I answered, as naturally and quietly as I knew how; “I have had such ideas—­such doubts.”

“And were you able to throw them off?—­by your will, I mean.”

She was leaning forward, her eyes fixed eagerly on mine.  How unexpected the privilege!  I felt that in another moment her secret would be mine.

“In time, yes,” I smiled back.  “Everything yields to time and persistent conscientious work.”

“But if you can not wait for time, if you must be relieved at once, can the will be made to suffice, when the day is dark and one is alone and not too busy?”

“The will can do much,” I insisted.  “Dark thoughts can be kept down by sheer determination.  But it is better to fill the mind so full with what is pleasant that no room is left for gloom.  There is so much to enjoy it must take a real sorrow to disturb a heart resolved to be happy.”

“Yes, resolved to be happy.  I am resolved to be happy.”  And she laughed merrily for a moment.  “Nothing else pays.  I will not dwell on anything but the pleasures which surround me.”  Here she took up her work again.  “I will forget—­I will—­” She stopped and her eyes left her work to flash a rapid and involuntary glance over her shoulder.  Had she heard a step?  I had not.  Or had she felt a draft of which I in my bounding health was unconscious?

“Are you cold?” I asked, as her glance stole back to mine.  “You are shivering—­”

“Oh, no,” she answered coldly, almost proudly.  “I’m perfectly warm.  I don’t feel slight changes.  I thought some one was behind me.  I felt—­Is Ellen in the adjoining room?”