.

THE PARAGRAPH.
I was up betimes.

Would Mrs.Packard appear at breakfast?
I hardly thought so.

Yet who knows?
Such women have great recuperative powers, and from one so mysteriously affected anything might be expected.
Ready at eight, I hastened down to the second floor to find the lady, concerning whom I had had these doubts, awaiting me on the threshold of her room.

She was carefully dressed and looked pale enough to have been up for hours.