There was little comfort to offer, but I tried to divert her mind to the practical aspect of the case by saying: “What can Mr. Steele be doing? He does not seem to be very successful in his attempts to carry out the mayor’s orders. See! your husband asks where he is. He can mean no other by the words ‘Where is S--?’ He knew that your mind would supply the name.” “Yes.” Her eyes had become fixed; her whole face betrayed a settled despair. Quickly, violently, she rang the bell. Nixon appeared. She advanced hurriedly to meet him. “Nixon, you have Mr. Steele’s address?” “Yes, Mrs. Packard.” “Then go to it at once. Find Mr. Steele if you can, but if that is not possible, learn where he has gone and come right back and tell me. Mr. Packard telegraphs to know where he is. He has not joined the mayor in C---.” “Yes, Mrs. Packard; the house is not far. I shall be back in fifteen minutes.” The words were respectful, but the sly glint in his blinking eyes as he hastened out fixed my thoughts again on this man and the uncommon attitude he maintained toward the mistress whose behests he nevertheless flew to obey. CHAPTER XIX. THE CRY FROM THE STAIRS I was alone in the library when Nixon returned. He must have seen Mrs. Packard go up before he left, for he passed by without stopping, and the next moment I heard his foot on the stairs. Some impulse made me step into the hall and cast a glance at his ascending figure. I could see only his back, but there was something which I did not like in the curve of that back and the slide of his hand as it moved along the stair-rail. His was not an open nature at the best. I almost forgot the importance of his errand in watching the man himself. Had he not been a servant--but he was, and an old and foolishly fussy one. I would not imagine follies, only I wished I could follow him into Mrs. Packard’s presence. His stay, however, was too short for much to have been gained thereby. Almost immediately he reappeared, shaking his head and looking very much disturbed, and I was watching his pottering descent when he was startled, and I was startled, by two cries which rang out simultaneously from above, one of pain and distress from the room he had just left, and one expressive of the utmost glee from the lips of the baby whom the nursemaid was bringing down from the upper hall. Appalled by the anguish expressed in the mother’s cry, I was bounding up-stairs when my course was stopped by one of the most poignant sights it has ever been my lot to witness. Mrs. Packard had heard her child’s laugh, and flying from her room had met the little one on the threshold of her door and now, crying and sobbing, was kneeling with the child in her arms in the open space at the top of the stairs. Her paroxysm of grief, wild and unconstrained as it was, gave less hint of madness than of intolerable suffering.