Had I known her better I might have found something extremely unnatural in her manner and the very evident restraint she put upon herself through the whole meal; but not having any acquaintance with her ordinary bearing under conditions purely social, I was thrown out of my calculations by the cold ease with which she presided at her end of the table, and the set smile with which she greeted all remarks, whether volunteered by her husband or by his respectful but affable secretary.  I noticed, however, that she ate little.

Nixon, whom I dared not watch, did not serve with his usual precision,—­this I perceived from the surprised look cast at him by Mayor Packard on at least two occasions.  Though to the ordinary eye a commonplace meal, it had elements of tragedy in it which made the least movement on the part of those engaged in it of real moment to me.  I was about to leave the table unenlightened, however, when Mrs. Packard rose and, drawing a letter from under the tray before which she sat, let her glances pass from one gentleman to the other with a look of decided inquiry.  I drew in my breath and by dropping my handkerchief sought an excuse for lingering in the room an instant longer.

“Will—­may I ask one of you,” she stammered with her first show of embarrassment during the meal, “to—­to post this letter for me?”

Both gentlemen were standing and both gentlemen reached for it; but it was into the secretary’s hand she put it, though her husband’s was much the nearer.  As Mr. Steele received it he gave it the casual glance natural under the circumstances,—­a glance which instantly, however, took on an air of surprise that ended in a smile.

“Have you not made some mistake?” he asked.

“This does not look like a letter.”  And he handed her back the paper she had given him.  With an involuntary ingathering of her breath, she seemed to wake out of some dream and, looking down at the envelope she held, she crushed it in her hand with a little laugh in which I heard the note of real gaiety for the first time.

“Pardon me,” she exclaimed; and, meeting his amused gaze with one equally expressive, she carelessly added:  “I certainly brought a letter down with me.”

Bowing pleasantly, but with that indefinable air of respect which bespeaks the stranger, he waited while she hastened back to the tray and drew from under it a second paper.

“Pardon my carelessness,” she said.  “I must have caught up a scrawl of the baby’s in taking this from my desk.”

She brought forward a letter and ended the whole remarkable episode by handing it now to her husband, who, with an apologetic glance at the other, put it in his pocket.

I say remarkable; for in the folded slip which had passed back and forth between her and the secretary, I saw, or thought I saw, a likeness to the paper she had brought the night before out of the attic.

If Mayor Packard saw anything unusual in his wife’s action he made no mention of it when I went into his study at nine o’clock.  And it was so much of an enigma to me that I was not ready to venture a question regarding it.