With no means of knowing whether they were legible or not, these characters made a surprising impression upon me, one, indeed, that was almost photographic.

I also noted that these shapes or characters, of which there were just seven, were written on the face of an empty envelope.  This decided any doubts I may have had as to its identity with the paper she had brought down from the attic.  That had been a square sheet, which even if folded would fail to enter this long and narrow envelope.  The interest which I had felt when I thought the two identical was a false interest.  Yet I could not but believe that this scrap had a value of its own equal to the one with which, under this misapprehension, I had invested it.

Carrying it back to Mrs. Packard, I handed it over with the remark that I had found it lying in the hall.  She cast a quick look at it, gave me another look and tossed the paper into the grate.  As it caught fire and flared up, the characters started vividly into view.

This second glimpse of them, added to the one already given me, fixed the whole indelibly in my mind.  This is the way they looked.

[]; V; []; .>; V; [-]; <;

While I watched these cabalistic marks pass from red to black and finally vanish in a wild leap up the chimney, Mrs. Packard remarked: 

“I wish I could destroy the memory of all my mistakes as completely as I can that old envelope.”

I did not answer; I was watching the weary droop of her hand over the arm of her chair.

“You are tired, Mrs. Packard,” was my sympathetic observation.  “Will you not take a nap?  I will gladly sit by you and read you to sleep.”

“No, no,” she cried, at once alert and active; “no sleep.  Look at that pile of correspondence, half of it on charitable matters.  Now that I feel better, now that I have relieved my mind, I must look over my letters and try to take up the old threads again.”

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Possibly.  If you will go to my room up-stairs, I will join you after I have sorted and read my mail.”

I was glad to obey this order.  I had a curiosity about her room.  It had been the scene of much I did not understand the night before.  Should I find any traces there of that search which had finally ended over my head in the attic?

I was met at the door by Ellen.  She wore a look of dismay which I felt fully accounted for when I looked inside.  Disorder reigned from one end of the room to the other, transcending any picture I may have formed in my own mind concerning its probable condition.  Mrs. Packard must have forgotten all this disarray, or at least had supposed it to have yielded to the efforts of the maid, when she proposed my awaiting her there.  There were bureau-drawers with their contents half on the floor, boxes with their covers off, cupboard-doors ajar and even the closet shelves showing every mark of a frenzied search