Greatly taken aback, I stood with my ear to the door, listening intently.  Yes, she has reached the top of the stairs and is stopping no, she passes the nursery door, she is coming my way.  What shall I say to her,—­how account for my comfortable wrapper and the fact that I have not yet been abed?  Had I but locked my door!  Could I but lock it now, unseen and unheard before the nearing step should pause!  But the very attempt were folly; no, I must stand my ground and—­Ah! the step has paused, but not at my door.  There is a third one on this hall, communicating, as I knew, with a covered staircase leading to the attic.  It was at this she stopped and it was up this staircase she went as warily and softly as its creaking boards would allow; and while I marveled as to what had taken her aloft so late, I heard her steps over my head and knew that she had entered the room directly above mine.

Striking a match, I consulted my watch.  It was just ten minutes to three.  Hardly knowing what my duty was in the circumstances, I blew out the match and stood listening while the woman who was such a mystery to all her friends moved about overhead in much the same quick and purposeful way as had put life into her shadow while she was in her own room.

“Packing!  Nothing less and nothing more,” was my now definite decision.  “That is a trunk she is dragging forward.  What a hurry she is in, and how little she cares whether anybody hears her!”

So little did she care that during the next few minutes of acute attention I distinguished the flinging down of article after article on to the floor, as well as many other movements betraying haste or irritation.

Suddenly I heard her give a bound, then the sound of a heavy lid falling and then, after a minute or two of complete silence, the soft pat-pat of her slippered feet descending the stair.

Half-past three.

Waiting till she was well down the second flight, I pushed my door ajar and, flying down the hall, peered over the balustrade in time to see her entering her room.  She held a lighted candle in her hand and by its small flame I caught a full glimpse of her figure.  To my astonishment and even to my dismay she was still in the gown she had refused to have me unlace,—­a rich yellow satin in which she must have shone resplendent a few hours before.  She had not even removed the jewels from her neck.  Whatever had occupied her, whatever had taken her hither and thither through the house, moving furniture out of her way, lifting heavy boxes, opening dust-covered trunks, had been of such moment to her as to make her entirely oblivious of the rich and delicate apparel she thus wantonly sacrificed.  But it was not this alone which attracted my attention.  In her hand she held a paper, and the sight of that paper and the way she clutched it rather disturbed my late conclusions.  Had her errand been one of search rather than of arrangement? and was this crumpled letter the sole result of a half-hour’s ransacking in an attic room at the dead of night?  I was fain to think so, for in the course of another half-hour her light went out.  Relieved that she had not left the house, I was still anxious as to the cause of her strange conduct.