t presently, meeting my eyes,
she blushed and made haste to remark:

"I certainly did Mr. Steele an arrant injustice. He was very respectful;
I wonder how I ever got the idea he could be anything else."

Anxious myself about this very fact, I attempted to reply, but she gave
me no opportunity.

"And now for those dinner invitations!" she gaily suggested. "While I
feel like it I must busy myself in making out my list. It will give me
something new to think about."

CHAPTER XVII. THE TWO WEIRD SISTERS

Ellen seemed to understand my anxiety about Mrs. Packard and to
sympathize with it. That afternoon as I passed her in the hall she
whispered softly:

"I have just been unpacking that bag and putting everything back into
place. She told me she had packed it in readiness to go with Mr. Packard
if he desired it at the last minute."

I doubted this final statement, but the fact that the bag had been
unpacked gave me great relief. I began to look forward with much
pleasure to a night of unbroken rest.

Alas! rest was not for me yet. Relieved as to Mrs. Packard, I found my
mind immediately reverting to the topic which had before engrossed it,
though always before in her connection. The mystery of the so-called
ghosts had been explained, but not the loss of the bonds, which had
driven my poor neighbors mad. This was still a fruitful subject of
thought, though I knew that such well-balanced and practical minds as
Mayor Packard's or Mr. Steele's would have but little sympathy with
the theory ever recurring to me. Could this money be still in the
house?--the possibility of such a fact worked and worked upon my
imagination till I grew as restless as I had been over the mystery of
the ghosts and presently quite as ready for action.

Possibly the hurried glimpse I had got of Miss Thankful's countenance a
little while before, in the momentary visit she paid to the attic
window at which I had been accustomed to see either her or her sister
constantly sit, inspired me with my present interest in this old and
wearing trouble of theirs and the condition into which it had thrown
their minds. I thought of their nights of broken rest while they were
ransacking the rooms below and testing over and over the same boards,
the same panels for the secret hiding-place of their lost treasure,
of their foolish attempts to scare away all other intruders, and the
racking of nerve and muscle which must have attended efforts so out of
ke