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 during which my purpose grew with every moment I gazed down on her brave but pitiful face, put on my hat and jacket and went next door. I found the two old ladies seated in their state apartment making calculations. At sight of my face they both rose and the “O my dear” from Miss Charity and the “God bless you, child,” from Miss Thankful showed that both hearts were yet warm. Gradually I introduced the topic of their nephew; gradually I approached the vital question of the disgrace. The result upset all my growing hopes. He had never told them just what the disgrace was. They really knew nothing about his life after his early boyhood. He had come home that one time when fortune so suddenly smiled upon them and they thought then that he would tell them something; but the disappointment which had followed effectually closed his lips, and he went away after a few days of fruitless search, not to approach them again till just before he took up the position of secretary to their great neighbor. Then he paid them one short and peremptory visit, during which he was able to impress upon them his importance, his reasons for changing his name, which they could not now remember, and the great necessity which this made for them not to come near him as their nephew. They had tried to do what he asked, but it had been hard. “Charity,” Miss Thankful proceeded to bewail with a forgetfulness of her own share in the matter, “had not been able to keep her eyes long off the house which held, as she supposed, our double treasure.” So this was all! Nothing to aid me; nothing to aid Mayor Packard. Rising in my disappointment, I prepared to leave. I had sufficient self-control and I hope good feeling not to add to their distress at this time by any unnecessary revelations of a past they were ignorant of, or the part this unhappy nephew of theirs had played and still promised to play in the lives of their immediate neighbors.