it a more auspicious moment--the moment
when he really would have time to take up the gage which Mr. Steele had
thrown down to him in his final words.

I was not a witness to the parting interview between Mayor Packard and
his wife; I had stolen into the nursery, for a look at the little one.
I found her sleeping sweetly, with one chubby hand under her rounded
cheek. Thus had she lain and thus had she slept during all those
dreadful minutes, when her future hung, trembling in the balance.

CHAPTER XXVII. A CHILD'S PLAYTHINGS

I was too much overwhelmed by all these events to close my eyes that
night. The revelation of Mr. Steele's further duplicity, coming so
immediately upon the first, roused fresh surmises and awakened
thoughts which soon set my wits working in a direction as new as it was
unexpected. I had believed my work over in this house, but as I recalled
all the occurrences of the evening and turned the situation, as it now
confronted me, over and over in my mind, I felt that it had just begun.
There must be something in this latest development to help us in the
struggle which lay before us. The rage which sprang up in him as he
confronted his old aunt at this moment of his triumphant revenge argued
a weakness in his armor which it might yet be my part to discover and
reveal. I knew Mrs. Packard well enough to realize that the serenity
into which she had fallen was a fictitious serenity, and must remain so
as long as any doubt remained of the legality of the tie uniting her to
this handsome fiend. Were the means suggested by the mayor of promising
enough character to accomplish the looked-for end?

I remembered the man's eyes as the mayor let fall his word of powerful
threat, and doubted it. Once recovered from the indisposition which now
weakened him, he would find means to thwart any attempts made by Mayor
Packard to undermine the position he had taken as the legal husband of
Olympia--sufficiently so, at least, to hinder happiness between the pair
whose wedded life he not only envied but was determined to break
up, unless some flaw in his past could be discovered through Miss
Quinlan--the aunt whose goodness he had slighted and who now seemed to
be in a frame of mind to help our cause if its pitiful aspects were once
presented to her. I resolved to present the case without delay. Morning
came at last, and I refreshed myself as well as I could, and, after a
short visit to Mrs. Packard's bedside duri