I wondered if it would be any relief to her to have Mr. Steele remain upon the premises.  I had heard him come in about three o’clock and go into the study, and when the time came for her friends to take their leave, and their voices in merry chatter came up to my ear from the open boudoir door, I stole down to ask her if I could suggest it to him.  But I was too late.  Just as I reached the head of the stairs on the second floor he came out of the study below and passed, hat in hand, toward the front door.

“What a handsome man!” came in an audible whisper from one of the ladies, who now stood in the lower hall.

“Who is he?” asked the other.

I thought he held the door open one minute longer than was necessary to catch her reply.  It was a very cold and unenthusiastic one.

“That is Mr. Packard’s secretary,” said she.  “He will join the mayor just as soon as he has finished certain preparations intrusted to him.”

“Oh!” was their quiet rejoinder, but a note of disappointment rang in both voices as the door shut behind him.

“One does not often see a perfectly handsome man.”

I stepped down to meet her when she in turn had shut the door upon them.

But I stopped half-way.  She was standing with her head turned away from me and the knob still in her hand.  I saw that she was thinking or was the prey of some rapidly growing resolve.

Suddenly she seized the key and turned it.

“The house is closed for the night,” she announced as she looked up and met my astonished gaze.  “No one goes out or comes in here again till morning.  I have seen all the visitors I have strength for.”

And though she did not know I saw it, she withdrew the key and slipped it into her pocket.  “This is Nixon’s night out,” she murmured, as she led the way to the library.  “Ellen will wait on us and we’ll have the baby down and play games and be as merry as ever we can be,—­to keep the ghosts away,” she cried in fresh, defiant tones that had just the faintest suggestion of hysteria in them.  “We shall succeed; I don’t mean to think of it again.  I’m right in that, am I not?  You look as if you thought so.  Ah, Mr. Packard was kind to secure me such a companion.  I must prove my gratitude to him by keeping you close to me.  It was a mistake to have those light-headed women visit me to-day.  They tired more than they comforted me.”

I smiled, and put the question which concerned me most nearly.

“Does Nixon stay late when he goes out?”

She threw herself into a chair and took up her embroidery.

“He will to-night,” was her answer.  “A little grandniece of his is coming on a late train from Pittsburgh.  I don’t think the train is due till midnight, and after that he’s got to take her to his daughter’s on Carey Street.  It will be one o’clock at least before he can be back.”

I hid my satisfaction.  Fate was truly auspicious.  I would make good use of his absence.  There was nobody else in the house whose surveillance I feared.