I am better now.

I shall be better yet when quite alone." Then suddenly: "Who knows of this--this folly of mine ?" "Only Nixon and myself.

The girls have gone to bed." "Nixon I can trust not to speak of it.

Tell him to go.

You, I know, will remember only long enough to do for me what I have just asked." "Mrs.Packard, you may trust me." The earnest, confiding look, which for a moment disturbed the melancholy of her large eyes, touched me closely as I shut the door between us.
"Now what is the meaning of this mystery ?" I asked myself after I had seen Nixon go downstairs, shaking his head and casting every now and then a suspicious glance behind him.