The effect upon me of these remarkable words was to heighten my
interest and raise me into a state of renewed hope, if not of
active expectation.
Another mind than my own had been at work along the only groove
which held out any promise of success, and this mind, having at
its command certain family traditions, had let me into a most
valuable secret. Another mind! Whose mind? That was a question
easily answered. But one man could have written these words; the
man who was thrust aside in early life in favor of his younger
brother, and who now, by the sudden death of that brother's
daughter, had come again into his inheritance. Uncle David, and
he only, was the puzzled inquirer whose self-communings I had just
read. This fact raised a new problem far me to work upon, and I
could but ask when these lines were written - before or after Mr.
Pfeiffer's death and whether he had ever succeeded in solving the
riddle he had suggested, or whether it was still a baffling
mystery to him. I was so moved by the suggestion conveyed in his
final and half-finished sentence, that I soon lost sight of these
lesser inquiries in the more important one connected with the
filigree ball. For I had seen this filigree ball. I had even
handled it. From the description given I was very certain that
it had been one of the many trinkets I had observed lying on the
dressing table when I made my first hasty examination of the room
on the evening of Mrs.
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