They looked at each other with a new and subtler audacity.

"You see," she said with a wistful smile, "this is not Shiela Cardross who sits here smiling into those brown eyes of yours. I think I died before you ever saw me; and out of the sea and the mist that day some changeling crept into your boat for your soul's undoing. Do you remember in Ingoldsby—'The cidevant daughter of the old Plantagenet line '?"

They laughed like children.

"Do you think our love-tempted souls are in any peril?" he asked lightly.

The question arrested her mirth so suddenly that he thought she must have misunderstood.

"What is it, Shiela?" he inquired, surprised.

"Garry—will you tell me something—if you can?... Then, what does it mean, the saying—'souls lost through love'? Does it mean what we have done?—because I am married? Would people think our souls lost—if they knew?"

"No, you blessed child!"

"Well, how can—"

"It's a lie anyway," he said. "Nothing is lost through love. It is something very different they mean."

"Yes," she said calmly, "something quite inconceivable, like 'Faust' and 'The Scarlet Letter,' ... I thought that was what they meant!"

Brooding over him, silent, pensive, clear eyes fearlessly meeting his, she drifted into guiltless retrospection.

"After all," she said, "except for letting everybody know that we belong to each other this is practically like marriage. Look at that honeymoon up there, Garry.... If, somehow, they could think we are engaged, and would let us alone for the rest of our lives, it would not matter.... Except I should like to have a house alone with you."

And she stooped, resting her cheek lightly against his, eyes vaguely sweet in the moonlight.

"I love you so," she murmured, as though to herself, "and there seems no end to it. It is such a hopeless sequence when yesterday's love becomes to-day's adoration and to-morrow's worship. What am I to do? What is the use of saying I am not free to love you, when I do?" She smiled dreamily. "I was silly enough to think it impossible once. Do you remember?"

"You darling!" he whispered, adoring her innocence. Then as he lay, head cradled on her knees, looking up at her, all unbidden, a vision of the future in its sharp-cut ominous desolation flashed into his vision—the world without her!—the endless stretch of time—youth with no meaning, effort wasted, attainment without desire, loneliness, arid, terrible days unending.

"It is too—too senseless!" he breathed, stumbling to his feet as the vague, scarcely formulated horror of it suddenly turned keen and bit into him as he began to realise for the first time something of what it threatened.

"What is it, Garry?" she asked in gentle concern, as he stood looking darkly at her. "Is it time to go? You are tired, I know." She rose and opened the great glass doors. "You poor tired boy," she whispered, waiting for him. And as he did not stir: "What is the matter, Garry?"

"Nothing. I am trying to understand that our winter is ended."

She nodded. "Mother and Gray and Cecile and I go North in April.... I wish we might stay through May—that is, if you—" She looked at him in silent consternation. "Where will you be!"

He said in a sullen voice: "That is what I was thinking of—our separation.... Do you realise that it is almost here?"

"No," she said faintly, "I cannot."

He moved forward, opening the glass doors wider; she laid one hand on his arm as though to guide herself; but the eastern corridors were bright with moonlight, every corner illuminated.

They were very silent until they turned into the south corridor and reached her door; and there he suddenly gave way to his passionate resentment, breaking out like a spoiled boy:

"Shiela, I tell you it's going to be unendurable! There must be some way out, some chance for us.... I don't mean to ask you to do what is—what you consider dishonourable. You wouldn't do it anyway, whether or not I asked you—"

"But don't ask me," she said, turning very white. "I don't know what I am capable of if I should ever see you suffer!"

"You couldn't do it!" he repeated; "it isn't in you to take your happiness at their expense, is it? You say you know how they would feel; I don't. But if you're asking for an annulment—"

"What? Do you mean divorce?"

"No.... That is—different—"

"But what—"

"You dear," he said, suddenly gentle, "you have never been a—wife; and you don't know it."

"Garry, are you mad?"

"Shiela, dear, some day will you very quietly ask some woman the difference between divorce and annulment?"

"Y-yes, if you wish.... Is it something you mayn't tell me, Garry?"

"Yes.... I don't know! You sometimes make me feel as though I could tell you anything.... Of course I couldn't ... you darling!" He stepped nearer. "You are so good and sweet, so utterly beyond evil, or the vaguest thought of it—"

"Garry—I am not! And you know it!"

He only laughed at her.

"You don't think I am a horrid sort of saint, do you?"

"No, not the horrid sort—"

"Garry! How can you say such things when I'm half ready now to run away with you!"

The sudden hint of fire in her face and voice, and something new in her eyes, sobered him.

"Now do you know what I am?" she said, breathing unevenly and watching him. "Only one thing keeps me respectable. I'd go with you; I'd live in rags to be with you. I ask nothing in the world or of the world except you. You could make me what you pleased, mould me—mar me, I believe—and I would be the happiest woman who ever loved. That is your saint!"

Flushed with her swift emotion, she stood a minute facing him, then laid her hand on the door knob behind her, still looking him in the eyes. Behind her the door slowly swung open under the pressure.

His own self-control was fast going; he dared not trust himself to speak lest he break down and beg for the only chance that her loyalty to others forbade her to take. But the new and deeper emotion which she had betrayed had awakened the ever-kindling impatience in him, and now, afire, he stood looking desperately on all he must for ever lose, till the suffering seemed unendurable in the checked violence of his revolt.

"Good night," she whispered sorrowfully, as the shadow deepened on his altered face.

"Are you going!"

"Yes.... And, somehow I feel that perhaps it is better not to—kiss me to-night. When I see you—this way—Garry, I could find it in me to do anything—almost.... Good night."

Watching him, she waited in silence for a while, then turned slowly and lighted the tiny night-lamp on the table beside her bed.

When she returned to the open door there was no light in the hall. She heard him moving somewhere in the distance.

"Where are you, Garry?"

He came back slowly through the dim corridor.

"Were you going without a word to me?" she asked.

He came nearer and leaned against the doorway.

"You are quite right," he said sullenly. "I've been a fool to let us drift in this way. I don't know where we're headed for, and it's time I did."

"What do you mean?"—in soft consternation.

"That there is no hope left for us—and that we are both pretty young, both in love, both close to desperation. At times I tell you I feel like a cornered beast—feel like showing my teeth at the world—like tearing you from it at any cost. I'd do it, too, if it were not for your father and mother. You and I could stand it."

"I would let you do it—if it were not for them," she said.

They looked at one another, both pale.

"Would you give up the whole moral show for me?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"You'd get a first-rate scoundrel."

"I wouldn't care if it were you."

"There's one thing," he said with a bluntness bordering on brutality, "all this is changing me into a man unfit to touch you. I warn you."

"What!"

"I tell you not to trust me!" he said almost savagely. "With heart and soul and body on fire for you—mad for you—I'm not to be trusted!"

"And I?" she faltered, deadly pale.

"You don't know what you're saying!" he said violently.

"I—I begin to think I do.... Garry—Garry—I am learning very fast!... How can I let you go!"

"The idea is," he said grimly, "for me to go before I go insane.... And never again to touch you—"

"Why?"

"Peril!" he said. "I'm just a plain blackguard, Shiela."

"Would it change you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Not to touch me, not to kiss me. Could you go on always just loving me?... Because if you could not—through the years that are coming—I—I had rather take the risk—with you—than lose you."

He stood, head bent, not trusting himself to speak or look at her.

"Good-night," she said timidly.

He straightened up, stared at her, and turned on his heel, saying good night in a low voice.

"Garry!"

"Good-night," he muttered, passing on.

Her heart was beating so violently that she pressed her hand to it, leaning against the door sill.

"Garry!" she faltered, stretching out the other hand to him in the darkness, "I—I do not care about the—risk—if you care to—kiss me—"

He swung round from the shadows to the dimly lighted sill; crossed it. For a moment they looked into one another's eyes; then, blinded, she swayed imperceptibly toward him, sighing as his arms tightened and her own crept up around his neck.

She yielded, resigning lips, and lids, and throat, and fragrant hair, and each slim finger in caress unending.

Conscious of nothing save that body and soul were safe in his beloved keeping, she turned to him in all the passion of a guiltless love, whispering her adoration, her faith, her trust, her worship of the man who held her; then, adrift once more, the breathless magic overwhelmed her; and she drew him to her, closer, desperately, hiding her head on his breast.

"Take me away, Garry," she stammered—"take me with you. There is no use—no use fighting it back. I shall die if you leave me.... Will you take me? I—will be—everything that—that you would have me—that you might wish for—in—in a—wife—"

She was crying now, crying her heart out, her face crushed against his shoulder, clinging to him convulsively.

"Will you take me, Garry? What am I without you? I cannot give you up! I will not.... Nobody can ask that of me—How can they ask that of me?—to give you up—to let you go out of my little world for ever—to turn from you, refuse you!... What a punishment for one instant's folly! If they knew they would not let me suffer this way!—They would want me to tell them—"

His dry lips unclosed. "Then tell them!" he tried to say, but the words were without sound; and, in the crisis of temptation, at the very instant of yielding, suddenly he knew, somehow, that he would not yield.

It came to him calmly, without surprise or shock, this stupid certainty of himself. And at the same moment the crisis was passing, leaving him stunned, impassive, half senseless as the resurgent passion battered at his will power, to wreck and undo it—deafening, imperative, wave on wave, in vain.

The thing to do was to hold on. One of them was adrift; the other dared not let go; he seemed to realise it, somehow. Odd bits of phrases, old-fashioned sayings, maxims long obsolete came to him without reason or sequence—"Greater love hath no man—no man—no man—" and "As ye do unto the least of these "—odd bits of phrases, old-fashioned sayings, maxims, alas! long obsolete, long buried with the wisdom of the dead.

He held her still locked in his arms. From time to time, unconsciously, as her hot grief spent itself, he bent his head, laying his face against hers, while his haggard, perplexed gaze wandered about the room.

In the dimness the snowy bed loomed beside them; pink roses patterned curtain and wall; the tiny night-light threw a roseate glow across her gown. In the fresh, sweet stillness of the room there was no sound or stir save their uneven breathing.

Very gently he lifted one of her hands and looked at it almost curiously—this small white hand so innocently smooth—as unblemished as a child's—this unsullied little hand that for an instant seemed to be slowly relaxing its grasp on the white simplicity around her—here in this dim, fresh, fragrant world of hers, called, intimately, her room.

And here where night and morning had so long held sacred all that he cared for upon earth—here in the white symbol of the world—her room—he gave himself again to her, without a word, without hope, knowing the end of all was near for them.

But it was she, not he, who must make the sign that ended all. And, after a long, long time, as she made no sign:

"Dearest," he breathed, "I know now that you will never go with me—for your father's sake."

That was premature, for she only clung the closer. He waited cautiously, every instinct alert, his head close to hers. And at last the hot fragrance of her tears announced the beginning of the end.

"Shiela?"

A stifled sound from his shoulder where her head lay buried.

"Choose now," he said.

No answer.

"Choose."

She cowered in his arms. He looked at the little hand once more, no longer limp but clenched against his breast. And he knew that the end was close at hand, and he spoke again, forcing her to her victory.

"Dearest, you must choose—"

"Garry!"

"Between those others—and me—"

She shrank out of his arms, turned with a sob, swayed, and sank on her knees beside the bed, burying her head in her crossed arms.

This was her answer; and with it he went away into the darkness, reeling, groping, while every pulse in him hammered ironic salutation to the victor who had loved too well to win. And in his whirling brain sounded the mocking repetition of his own words: "Nothing is lost through love! Nothing is lost—nothing—nothing!"—flouting, taunting him who had lost love itself there on the firing line, for a comrade's sake.

His room was palely luminous with the lustre of the night. On the mantel squatted a little wizened and gilded god peering and leering at him through the shadows—Malcourt's parting gift—the ugliest of the nineteen.

"For," said Malcourt—"there ought to be only eighteen by rights—unless further complications arise; and this really belongs to you, anyway."

So he left the thing on Hamil's mantel, although the latter had no idea what Malcourt meant, or why he made the parting offering.

Now he stood there staring at it like a man whose senses waver, and who fixes some object to steady nerve and brain.

Far in the night the voice of the ocean stirred the silence—the ocean which had given her to him that day in the golden age of fable when life and the world were young together, and love wore a laughing mask.

He listened; all the night was sighing with the sigh of the surf; and the breeze in the trees mourned; and the lustre died out in thickening darkness as he stood there, listening.

Then all around him through the hushed obscurity a vague murmur grew, accentless, sad, interminable; and through the monotone of the falling rain he heard the ocean very far away washing the body of a young world dead to him for ever.

* * * * *

Crouched low beside her bed, face quivering in her arms, she heard, in the stillness, the call of the sea—that enchanted sea which had given him to her that day, when Time and the World were young together in the blessed age of dreams.

And she heard the far complaint of the surf, breaking unsatisfied; and a strange wind flowing through the trees; then silence, suspense; and the world's dark void slowly filling with the dreadful monotone of the rain.

* * * * *

Storm after storm of agony and doubt swept her; she prayed convulsively, at random, reiterating incoherence in blind, frightened repetition till the stupefying sequence lost all meaning.

Exhausted, half-senseless, her hands still clung together, her tear-swollen lips still moved to form his name, asking God's mercy on them both. But the end had come.



Yes, the end; she knew it now—understood what had happened, what must be. And, knowing, she heard the sea-rain whispering their judgment, and the winds repeating it across the wastes.

She raised her head, dumb, rigid, listening, and stared through the shaking window into obscurity. Lightning flickered along the rim of the world—a pallid threat above the sea—the sea which had given them to one another and left them stranded in each other's arms there on the crumbling edges of destruction.

Her strained eyes divined, her straining senses comprehended; she cringed lower, aghast, swaying under the menace, then fell prone, head buried in her tumbled hair.

* * * * *

In the morning he left for the North and Portlaw's camp. Gray drove him to the station; Cecile, in distractingly pretty negligee waved him audacious adieu from her window.

"Shiela seems to be ill," explained Gray, as the motor car shot out into the haze of early morning. "She asked me to say good-bye for her.... I say, Hamil, you're looking rather ill yourself. This climate is sure to get a white man sooner or later, if he remains too long. But the North will put you into condition. You're going straight to Portlaw's camp on Luckless Lake?"

"Yes," said Hamil listlessly.

"Well, we'll be in New York in a week or two. You'll surely look us up when you're in town, won't you? And write me a line about Acton and father—won't you?"

"Surely," nodded Hamil absently.

And they sped on, the vast distorted shadow of the car racing beside them to the station.



CHAPTER XIX

THE LINE OF BATTLE

Portlaw's camp in the southern foot-hills of the Adirondacks was as much a real camp as the pretentious constructions at Newport are real cottages. A modesty, akin to smugness, designates them all with Heep-like humbleness under a nomenclature now tolerated through usage; and, from the photographs sent him, Hamil was very much disgusted to find a big, handsome two-story house, solidly constructed of timber and native stone, dominating a clearing in the woods, and distantly flanked by the superintendent's pretty cottage, the guides' quarters, stables, kennels, coach-houses, and hothouses with various auxiliary buildings still farther away within the sombre circle of the surrounding pines.

To this aggravation of elaborate structures Portlaw, in a spasm of modesty, had given the name of "Camp Chickadee"; and now he wanted to stultify the remainder of his domain with concrete terraces, bridges, lodges, and Gothic towers in various and pleasing stages of ruin.

So Hamil's problem presented itself as one of those annoyingly simple ones, entirely dependent upon Portlaw and good taste; and Portlaw had none.

He had, however, some thirty thousand acres of woods and streams and lakes fenced in with a twelve-foot barrier of cattle-proof wire—partly a noble virgin wilderness unmarred by man-trails; partly composed of lovely second growth scarcely scarred by that, vile spoor which is the price Nature pays for the white-hided invaders who walk erect, when not too drunk, and who foul and smear and stain and desolate water and earth and air around them.

Why Portlaw desired to cut his wilderness into a mincing replica of some emasculated British royal forest nobody seemed able to explain. While at Palm Beach he had made two sage observations to Hamil concerning the sacredness of trees; one was that there are no trees in a Scotch deer forest, which proved to his satisfaction that trees are unnecessary; the other embodied his memories of seeing a herd of calf-like fallow deer decorating the grass under the handsome oaks and beeches of some British nobleman's park.

Why Portlaw concerned himself at all with his wild, out-world domain was a mystery, too; for he admitted that he spent almost all day playing cards indoors or contriving with his cook some new and succulent experiment in the gastronomical field.

Sometimes he cast a leaden eye outdoors when his dogs were exercised from the kennel; rarely, and always unwillingly, he followed Malcourt to the hatchery to watch the stripping, or to the exotic pheasantry to inspect the breeding of birds entirely out of place in such a climate.

He did like to see a fat deer; the fatter the better; he was accustomed, too, to poke his thumb into the dead plumage of a plump grouse when Malcourt's men laid out the braces, on which he himself never drew trigger; and which interested him only when on the table.

He wanted plenty of game and fish on the place for that reason; he wanted his guests to shoot and fish for that reason, too. Otherwise he cared nothing for his deer, his grouse, and his trout. And why he suddenly had been bitten with a mania for "improving" the flawless wilderness about him, even Malcourt did not know.

Hamil, therefore, was prepared for a simple yet difficult problem—to do as little harm to the place as possible, and to appease Portlaw at the same time, and curb his meddlesome and iconoclastic proclivities.

Spring had begun early in the North; shallow snows were fading from the black forest soil along the streams' edges, and from the pebbled shores of every little lake; already the soft ice was afloat on pool and pond; muskrats swam; the eggs of the woodcock were beginning their chilly incubation; and in one sheltered spring-hole behind the greenhouse Malcourt discovered a solemn frog afloat. It takes only a single frog to make the spring-time.

That week the trailing fragrance of arbutus hung over wet hollows along the hills; and at night, high in the starlight, the thrilling clangour of wild geese rang out—the truest sky-music of the North among all the magic folk-songs of the wild.

The anchor-ice let go and went out early, and a few pioneer trout jumped that week; the cock-grouse, magnificent in his exquisite puffed ruff, paced the black-wet drumming log, and the hollow woodlands throbbed all day with his fairy drumming.

On hard-wood ridges every sugar-bush ran sap; the aroma from fire and kettle sweetened the air; a few battered, hibernating butterflies crawled out of cracks and crannies and sat on the sap-pans sunning their scarlet-banded wings.

And out of the hot South into the fading silver of this chill Northern forest-world came Hamil, sunburned, sombre-eyed, silent.

Malcourt met him at Pride's Fall with a buckboard and a pair of half-broken little Morgans; and away they tore into the woods, scrambling uphill, plunging downhill, running away most of the time to the secret satisfaction of Malcourt, who cared particularly for what was unsafe in life.

He looked sideways at Hamil once or twice, and, a trifle disappointed that the pace seemed to suit him, let the little horses out.

"Bad thing to meet a logging team," he observed.

"Yes," said Hamil absently. So Malcourt let the horses run away when they cared to; they needed it and he enjoyed it. Besides there were never any logging teams on that road.

Malcourt inquired politely concerning the Villa Cardross and its occupants; Hamil answered in generalities.

"You've finished there, then!"

"Practically. I may go down in the autumn to look it over once more."

"Is Cardross going to put in the Schwarzwald pigs?"

"Yes; they're ordered."

"Portlaw wants some here. I'd give ten dollars, poor as I am, if I could get Portlaw out in the snow and fully occupied with an irritated boar."

"Under such circumstances one goes up a tree?" inquired Hamil, smiling.

"One does if one is not too fat and can shed snowshoes fast enough. Otherwise one keeps on shooting one's 45-70. By the way, you were in New York for a day or two. How's the market?"

"Sagging."

"Money?"

"Scarce. I saw Mr. Cardross and Acton Carrick. Nobody seems enthusiastic over the prospect. While there are no loans being called there are few being made. I heard rumours of course; a number of banks and trust companies are getting themselves whispered about. Outside of that I don't know, Malcourt, because I haven't much money and what I have is on deposit with the Shoshone Securities Company pending a chance for some safe and attractive investment."

"That's Cardross, Carrick & Co."

"Yes." And as they whirled into the clearing and the big, handsome house came into view he smiled: "Is this Camp Chickadee?"

"Yes, and yonder's my cottage on Luckless Lake—a nice name," added Malcourt, "but Portlaw says it's safer to leave the name as it stands than to provoke the gods with boastful optimism by changing it to Lucky Lake. Oh, it's a gay region; Lake Desolation lies just beyond that spur; Lake Eternity east of us; Little Scalp Lake west—a fine bunch of names for a landscape in hell; but Portlaw won't change them. West and south the wet bones of the Sacandaga lie; and south-east you're up against the Great Vlaie and Frenchman's Creek and Sir William's remains from Guy Park on the Mohawk to the Fish House and all that bally Revolutionary tommy-rot." And as he blandly drew in his horses beside the porch: "Look who's here! Who but our rotund friend and lover of all things fat, lord of the manor of Chickadee-dee-dee which he has taught the neighbouring dicky-birds, who sit around the house, to repeat aloud in honour of—"

"For Heaven's sake, Louis! How are you, Hamil?" grunted Portlaw, extending a heavily cushioned, highly coloured hand of welcome.

Hamil and Malcourt descended; a groom blanketed the horses and took them to the stables; and Portlaw, with a large gesture of impatient hospitality, led the way into a great, warm living-room, snug, deeply and softly padded, and in which the fragrance of burning birch-logs and simmering toddy blended agreeably in the sunshine.

"For luncheon," began Portlaw with animation, "we're going to try a new sauce on that pair of black ducks they brought in—"

"In violation of the laws of game and decency," observed Malcourt, shedding his fur coat and unstrapping the mail-satchel from Pride's Fall.

"Shut up, Louis! Can't a man eat the things that come into his own property?" And he continued unfolding to Hamil his luncheon programme while, with a silver toddy-stick, heirloom from bibulous generations of Portlaws, he stirred the steaming concoction which, he explained, had been constructed after the great Sir William's own receipt.

"You've never tried a Molly Brant toddy? Man alive, you've wasted your youth," he insisted, genuinely grieved. "Well, wise men, chiefs, and sachems, here's more hair on your scalp-locks, and a fat buck to every bow!"

Malcourt picked up his glass. "Choh" he said maliciously; but Portlaw did not understand the irony in the Seminole salutation of The Black Drink; and the impudent toast was swallowed without suspicion.

Then Hamil's luggage arrived, and he went away to inspect his quarters, prepare for luncheon, and exchange his attire for forest dress. For he meant to lose no time in the waste corners of the earth when Gotham town might any day suddenly bloom like Eden with the one young blossom that he loved.

There was not much for him in Eden now—little enough except to be in her vicinity, near her at times, at intervals with her long enough to exchange a word or two under the smooth mask of convention which leaves even the eyes brightly expressionless.

Never again to touch her hand save under the formal laws sanctioned by usage; never again to wake with the intimate fragrance of her memory on his lips; never again to wait for the scented dusk to give them to each other—to hear her frail gown's rustle on the terrace, her footfall in the midnight corridor, her far, sweet hail to him from the surf, her soft laughter under the roses on the moon-lit balcony.

That—all of it—was forever ended. But he believed that the pallid northern phantom of the past was still left to him; supposed that now, at least, they might miserably consider themselves beyond peril.

But what man supposes of woman is vain imagining; and in that shadowy neutral ground which lies between martyrdom and sin no maid dwells for very long before she crosses one frontier or the other.

When he descended the stairs once more he found Portlaw, surrounded by the contents of the mail-sack, and in a very bad temper, while Malcourt stood warming his back at the blazing birch-logs, and gazing rather stupidly at a folded telegram in his hands.

"Well, Hamil—damn it all! What do you think of that!" demanded Portlaw, turning to Hamil as he entered the room; and unheeding Malcourt's instinctive gesture of caution which he gave, not comprehending why he gave it, Portlaw went on, fairly pouting out his irritation:

"In that bally mail-sack which Louis brought in from Pride's Fall there's a telegram from your friend, Neville Cardross; and why the devil he wants Louis to come to New York on the jump—"

"I have a small balance at the Shoshone Trust," said Malcourt. "Do you suppose there's anything queer about the company?"

Hamil shook his head, looking curiously at Malcourt.

"Well, what on earth do you think Cardross wants with you?" demanded Portlaw. "Read that telegram again."

Again Malcourt's instinct seemed to warn him to silence. All the same, with a glance at Hamil, he unfolded the bit of yellow paper and read:

"LOUIS MALCOURT, "Superintendent Luckless Lake, "Adirondacks.

"Your presence is required at my office in the Shoshone Securities Building on a matter of most serious and instant importance. Telegraph what train you can catch. Mr. Carrick will meet you on the train at Albany.

"NEVILLE CARDROSS. "Answer Paid."

"Well, what the devil does it mean?" demanded Portlaw peevishly. "I can't spare you now. How can I? Here's Hamil all ready for you to take him about and show him what I want to have done—"

"I wonder what it means," mused Malcourt. "Maybe there's something wrong with the Tressilvain end of the family. The Shoshone Securities people manage her investments here—"

"The way to do is to wire and find out," grumbled Portlaw, leading the way to the luncheon table as a servant announced that function.

For it was certainly a function with Portlaw; all eating was more or less of a ceremony, and dinner rose to the dignity of a rite.

"I can't imagine what that telegram—"

"Forget it!" snapped Portlaw; "do you want to infect my luncheon? When a man lunches he ought to give his entire mind to it. Talk about your lost arts!—the art of eating scarcely survives at all. Find it again and you revive that other lost art of prandial conversation. Digestion's not possible without conversation. Hamil, you look at your claret in a funny way."

"I was admiring the colour where the sun strikes through," said the latter, amused.

"Oh! I thought you were remembering that claret is temporarily unfashionable. That's part of the degeneracy of the times. There never was and never will be any wine to equal it when it has the body of a Burgundy and the bouquet of wild-grape blossoms. Louis," cocking his heavy red face and considering a morsel of duck, "what is your opinion concerning the proper melange for that plumcot salad dressing?"

"They say," said Malcourt gravely, "that when it's mixed, a current of electricity passed through it gives it a most astonishing flavour—"

"What!"

"So they say at the Stuyvesant Club."

Portlaw's eyes bulged; Hamil had to bend his head low over his plate, but Malcourt's bland impudence remained unperturbed.

"Good God!" muttered Portlaw; "Hamil, did you ever hear of passing electricity through a salad dressing composed of olive oil, astragon, Arequipa pepper, salt, Samara mustard, essence of anchovy, chives, distilled fresh mushrooms, truffles pickled in 1840 port—did you?"

"No," said Hamil, "I never did."

For a while silence settled upon the table while Portlaw struggled to digest mentally the gastronomic suggestion offered by Malcourt.

"I could send to town for a battery," he said hesitatingly; "or—there's my own electric plant—"

Malcourt yawned. There was not much fun in exploiting such a man. Besides, Hamil had turned uncomfortable, evidently considering it the worst of taste on Malcourt's part.

"What am I to do about that telegram?" he asked, lighting a cigarette.

Portlaw, immersed in sauce and the electrical problem, adjusted his mind with an effort to this other and less amusing question.

"Wire for particulars and sit tight," advised Portlaw. "We've just three now for 'Preference,' and if you go kiting off to town Hamil and I will be forced into double dummy, and that's a horrible mental strain on a man—isn't it, Hamil?"

"I could use the long-distance telephone," said Malcourt pensively.

"Well, for the love of Mike go and do it!" shouted Portlaw, "and let me try to enjoy this Andelys cheese."

So Malcourt sauntered out through the billiard-room, leaving an aromatic trail of cigarette smoke in his wake; and he closed all the intervening doors—why, he himself could not have explained.

He was absent a long time. Portlaw had terminated the table ceremony, and now, ensconced among a dozen fat cushions by the fire, a plump cigar burning fragrantly between his curiously clean-cut and sharply chiselled lips, he sat enthroned, majestically digesting; and his face of a Greek hero, marred by heavy flesh, had become almost somnolent in its expression of well-being and corporeal contentment.

"I don't know what I'd do without Louis," he said sleepily. "He keeps my men hustling, he answers for everything on the bally place, he's so infernally clever that he amuses me and my guests, he's on the job every minute. It would be devilishly unpleasant for me if I lost him.... And I'm always afraid of it.... There are usually a lot of receptive girls making large eyes at him.... My only safety is that they are so many—and so easy.... If Cardross hadn't signed that telegram I'd bet my bottes-sauvage it concerned some entanglement."

Hamil lay back in his chair and studied the forest through the leaded casement. Sometimes he thought of Portlaw's perverse determination to spoil the magnificent simplicity of the place with exotic effects lugged in by the ears; sometimes he wondered what Mr. Cardross could have to say to Malcourt—what matter of such urgent importance could possibly concern those two men.

And, thinking, he thought of Shiela—and of their last moments together; thought of her as he had left her, crouched there on her knees beside the bed, her face and head buried in her crossed arms.

Portlaw was nodding drowsily over his cigar; the April sunshine streamed into the room through every leaded pane, inlaying the floor with glowing diamonds; dogs barked from the distant kennels; cocks were crowing from the farm. Outside the window he saw how the lilac's dully varnished buds had swollen and where the prophecy of snow-drop and crocus under the buckthorn hedge might be fulfilled on the morrow. Already over the green-brown, soaking grass one or two pioneer grackle were walking busily about; and somewhere in a near tree the first robin chirked and chirped and fussed in its loud and familiar fashion, only partly pleased to find himself in the gray thaw of the scarcely comfortable North once more.

Portlaw looked up dully: "Those robins come up here and fatten on our fruit, and a fool law forbids us to shoot 'em. Robin pie," he added, "is not to be despised, but a sentimental legislature is the limit.... Sentiment always did bore me.... How do you feel after your luncheon?"

"All right," said Hamil, smiling. "I'd like to start out as soon as Malcourt comes back."

"Oh, don't begin that sort of thing the moment you get here!" protested Portlaw. "My heavens, man! there's no hurry. Can't you smoke a cigar and play a card or two—"

"You know I've other commissions—"

"Oh, of course; but I hoped you'd have time to take it easy. I've looked forward to having you here—so has Malcourt; he thinks you're about right, you know. And he makes damn few friends among men—"

The door opened and Malcourt entered slowly, almost noiselessly. There was not a vestige of colour in his face, nor of expression as he crossed the room for a match and relighted his cigarette.

"Well?" inquired Portlaw, "did you get Cardross on the wire?"

"Yes."

Malcourt stood motionless, hands in his pockets, the cigarette smoke curling up blue in the sunshine.

"I've got to go," he said.

"What for?" demanded Portlaw, then sulkily begged pardon and pouted his dissatisfaction in silence.

"When do you go, Malcourt?" asked Hamil, still wondering.

"Now." He lifted his head but looked across at Portlaw. "I've telephoned the stable, and called up Pride's Fall to flag the five-thirty express," he said.

Portlaw was growing madder and madder.

"Would you mind telling me when you expect to be back?" he inquired ill-temperedly.

"I don't know yet."

"Don't know!" burst out Portlaw; "hell's bells!"

Malcourt shook his head.

Portlaw profanely requested information as to how the place was to be kept going. Malcourt was patient with him to the verge of indifference.

"There's nothing to blow up about. Hastings is competent to manage things—"

"That conceited pup!"

"Hastings understands," repeated Malcourt, in a listless voice. "I've always counted on Alexander Hastings for any emergency. He knows things, and he's capable.... Only don't be brusque. He doesn't understand you as I do ... and he's fully your equal—fully—in every way—and then some—" The weariness in his tone was close to a sneer; he dropped his cigarette into the fire and began to roll another.

"Louis," said Portlaw, frightened.

"Well?"

"What the devil is the meaning of all this? You are coming back, aren't you?"

Malcourt continued to roll his cigarette, but after a while he spoiled it and began to construct another.

"Are you, Louis?"

"What?"

"Coming back here—soon?"

"If I—if it's the thing to do. I don't know yet. You mustn't press the matter now."

"You think there's a chance that you won't come back at all!" exclaimed Portlaw, aghast.

Malcourt's cigarette fell to pieces in his fingers.

"I'll come if I can, Billy. I tell you to let me alone.... I don't know where I am coming out—yet."

"If it's money you need, you know perfectly well—"

But Malcourt shook his head. From the moment of his entrance he had kept his face carefully averted from Hamil's view; had neither looked at him nor spoken except in monosyllabic answer to a single question.

The rattle of the buckboard on the wet gravel drive brought Portlaw to his feet. A servant appeared with Malcourt's suit-case and overcoat.

"There's a trunk to follow; Williams is to pack what I need.... Good-bye, Billy. I wouldn't go if I didn't have to."

Portlaw took his offered hand as though dazed.

"You'll come back, of course," he said, "in a couple of days—or a week if you like—but you'll be back, of course. You know if there's anything the matter with your salary just say so. I always meant you should feel perfectly free to fix your salary to suit yourself. Only be sure to come back in a week, won't you?"

"Good-bye," said Malcourt in a low voice. "I'd like to talk to Hamil—if he can give me a few moments."

Bareheaded, Hamil stepped out into the clear, crisp, April sunshine where the buckboard stood on the gravel.

The strong outdoor light emphasized Malcourt's excessive pallor, and the hand he offered Hamil was icy. Then his nervous grasp relaxed; he drew on his dog-pelt driving gloves and buttoned the fur coat to the throat.

"I want you—to—to remember—remember that I always liked you," he said with an effort, in curious contrast to his habitual fluency. "You won't believe it—some day. But it is true.... Perhaps I'll prove it, yet.... My father used to say that everything except death had been proven; and there remained, therefore, only one event of any sporting interest to the world.... He was a very interesting man—my father. He did not believe in death.... And I do not.... This sloughing off of the material integument seems to me purely a matter of the mechanical routine of evolution, a natural process in further and inevitable development, not a finality to individualism!... Fertilisation, gestation, the hatching, growth, the episodic deliverance from encasing matter which is called death, seem to me only the first few basic steps in the sequences of an endless metamorphosis.... My father thought so. His was a very fine mind—is a finer mind still.... Will you understand me if I say that we often communicate with each other—my father and I?"

"Communicate?" repeated Hamil.

"Often."

Hamil said slowly: "I don't think I understand."

Malcourt looked at him, the ever-latent mockery flickering in his eyes; then, by degrees, his head bent forward in the old half-cunning, half-wistful attitude as though listening. A vague smile touched the pallor of his face, and he presently looked up with something of his old debonair impudence.

"The truly good are always so interested in creating hell for the wicked," he said, "that sometimes the good get into the pit themselves just to see how hot it really is. And find the wicked have never been there.... Hamil, the hopelessly wicked—and there are few of them who are not mentally irresponsible—never go to hell because they wouldn't mind it if they did. It's the good who are hell's architects and often its tenants.... I'm speaking of all prisoners of conscience. The wicked have none."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"There's always an exit from one of these temporary little pits of torment," he said; "when one finds it too oppressive in the shade.... When one obtains a proper perspective, and retains one's sense of humour, and enough of conscience to understand the crime of losing time.... And when, in correct perspective, one realises the fictitious value of that temporary phase called the human unit, and when one cuts free from the absurd dogma concerning the dignity and the sanctity of that human unit.... I'm keeping you from your cigar and arm-chair and from Portlaw.... A good, kindly gossip, who fed my belly and filled my purse and loved me for the cards I played. I'm a yellow pup to mock him. I'm a pup anyhow.... But, Hamil, there is, in the worst pup, one streak not all yellow. And the very worst are capable of one friendship. You may not believe this some day. But it is true.... Good-bye."

"Is there anything, Malcourt—"

"Nothing you can do for me. Perhaps something I can do for you—" And, laughing, "I'll consult my father; he's not very definite on that point yet."

So Malcourt swung aboard the wagon, nodded again to Hamil, waved a pleasant adieu to Portlaw at the window, and was gone in a shower of wet gravel and mud.

And all that day Portlaw fussed and fumed and pouted about the house, tormenting Hamil with questions and speculations concerning the going of Malcourt, which for a while struck Hamil merely as selfish ebullitions; but later it came to him by degrees that this rich, selfish, over-fed, over-pampered, and revoltingly idle landowner, whose sole mental and physical resources were confined to the dinner and card tables, had been capable of a genuine friendship for Malcourt. Self-centred, cautious to the verge of meanness in everything which did not directly concern his own comfort and well-being, he, nevertheless, was totally dependent upon his friends for a full enjoyment of his two amusements; for he hated to dine alone and he loathed solitaire.

Therefore, in spending money to make his house and grounds attractive to his friends, he was ministering, as always, to himself; and when he first took Malcourt for his superintendent he did so from purely selfish motives and at a beggarly stipend.

And now, in the two years of his official tenure, Malcourt already completely dominated him, often bullied him, criticised him to his face, betrayed no illusions concerning the absolute self-interest which dictated Portlaw's policy in all things, coolly fixed and regulated all salaries, including his own, and, in short, matched Portlaw's undisguised selfishness with a cynicism so sparkling and so frankly ruthless that Portlaw gradually formed for him a real attachment.

There was no indiscriminate generosity in that attachment; he never voluntarily increased Malcourt's salary or decreased his responsibilities; he got out of his superintendent every bit of labour and every bit of amusement he could at the lowest price Malcourt would take; yet, in spite of that he really cared for Malcourt; he secretly admired his intellectual equipment; feared it, too; and the younger man's capacity for dissipation made him an invaluable companion when Portlaw emerged from his camp in November and waddled forth upon his annual hunt for happiness.

Something of this Hamil learned through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for such a self-centred person.

"That damn Louis," he confided to Hamil over their after-dinner cigars, "has kept me guessing ever since he took command here. Half the time I don't understand what he's talking about even when I know he's making fun of me; but, Hamil, you have no idea how I miss him."

And on another occasion a week later, while laboriously poring over some rough plans laid out for him by Hamil:

"Louis agrees with you about this improvement business. He's dead against my building Rhine-castle ruins on the crags, and he had the impudence to inform me that I had a cheap mind. By God, Hamil, I can't see anything cheap in trying to spend a quarter of a million in decorating this infernal monotony of trees; can you?"

And Hamil, for the first time in many a day, lay back in his arm-chair and laughed with all his heart.

He had hard work in weaning Portlaw from his Rhine castles, for the other invariably met his objections by quoting in awful German:

"Hast du das Schloss gesehen— Das hohe Schloss am Meer?"

—pronounced precisely as though the words were English. Which laudable effort toward intellectual and artistic uplift Hamil never laughed at; and there ensued always the most astonishing causerie concerning art that two men in a wilderness ever engaged in.

Young Hastings, a Yale academic and forestry graduate, did fairly well in Malcourt's place, and was doing better every day. For one thing he knew much more about practical forestry and the fish and game problems than did Malcourt, who was a better organiser than executive.

He began by dumping out into a worthless and landlocked bass-pond every brown trout in the hatchery. He then drew off the water in the brown-trout ponds, sent in men with seines and shotguns, and finally, with dynamite, purged the free waters of the brown danger for good and all.

"When Malcourt comes back," observed Portlaw, "you'll have to answer for all this."

"I won't be questioned," said Hastings, smiling.

"Oh! And what do you propose to do next?"

"If I had the money you think of spending on ruined castles "—very respectfully—"I'd build a wall in place of that mesh-wire fence."

"Why?" asked Portlaw.

"The wire deceives the grouse when they come driving headlong through the woods. My men pick up dozens of dead grouse and woodcock along the fence. If it were a wall they'd go over it. As it is, if I had my way, I'd restock with Western ruffed-grouse; cut out that pheasantry altogether, and try to breed our own native game-bird—"

"What! You can't breed ruffed-grouse in captivity!"

"I've done it, sir," said young Hastings modestly.

That night, over the plans, Portlaw voiced his distrust of Hastings and mourned aloud for Malcourt.

"That infernal Louis," he complained, waving his fat cigar, "hasn't written one line to me in a week! What the deuce is he doing down there in town? I won't stand it! The ice is out and Wayward and Cuyp and Vetchen are coming up for the fishing; and Mrs. Ascott, perhaps, is coming, and Miss Palliser, and, I hope, Miss Suydam; that makes our eight for Bridge, you see, with you and me. If Louis were here I'd have three others—but I can't ask anybody else until I know."

"Perhaps you'll get a telegram when the buckboard returns from Pride's Fall," said Hamil quietly. He, too, had been waiting for a letter that had not come. Days were lengthening into weeks since his departure from the South; and the letter he taught himself to expect had never come.

That she would write sooner or later he had dared believe at first; and then, as day after day passed, belief faded into hope; and now the colours of hope were fading into the gray tension of suspense.

He had written her every day, cheerful, amusing letters of current commonplaces which now made up his life. In them was not one hint of love—no echo of former intimacy, nothing of sadness, or regret, only a friendly sequence of messages, of inquiries, of details recounting the events of the days as they dawned and faded through the silvery promise of spring in the chill of the Northern hills.

Every morning and evening the fleet little Morgans came tearing in from Pride's Fall with the big leather mail-bag, which bore Portlaw's initials in metal, bulging with letters, newspapers, magazines for Portlaw; and now and then a slim envelope for him from his aunt, or letters, bearing the Palm Beach post-mark, from contractors on the Cardross estate, or from his own superintendent. But that was all.

His days were passed afoot in the forested hills, along lonely little lakes, following dashing trout-brooks or studying the United States Geological Survey maps which were not always accurate in minor details of contour, and sometimes made a mockery of the lesser water-courses, involving him and his surveyors in endless complications.

Sometimes, toward evening, if the weather was mild, he and Portlaw took their rods for a cast on Painted Creek—a noble trout stream which took its name from the dropping autumn glory of the sugar-bush where the water passed close to the house. There lithe, wild trout struck tigerishly at the flies and fought like demons, boring Portlaw intensely, who preferred to haul in a prospective dinner without waste of energy, and be about the matter of a new sauce with his cook.



CHAPTER XX

A NEW ENEMY

One evening in April, returning with a few brace of trout, they found the mail-bag awaiting them on the hall table; and Portlaw distributed the contents, proclaiming, as usual, his expectation of a letter from Malcourt.

There was none. And, too peevish and disappointed to even open the heterogeneous mass of letters and newspapers, he slumped sulkily in his chair, feet on the fender, biting into his extinct cigar.

"That devilish Louis," he said, "has been away for several of the most accursedly lonely weeks I ever spent.... No reflection on you, Hamil—Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn't see you were busy—"

Hamil had not even heard him. He was busy—very busy with a letter—dozens of sheets of a single letter, closely written, smeared in places—the letter that had come at last!

In the fading light he bent low over the pages. Later a servant lighted the lamps; later still Portlaw went into the library, drew out a book bound in crushed levant, pushed an electric button, and sat down. The book bound so admirably in crushed levant was a cook-book; the bell he rang summoned his cook.

In the lamplit living-room the younger man bent over the letter that had come at last. It was dated early in April; had been written at Palm Beach, carried to New York, but had only been consigned to the mails within thirty-six hours:

"I have had all your letters—but no courage to answer. Now you will write no more.

"Dear—this, my first letter to you, is also my last. I know now what the condemned feel who write in the hour of death.

"When you went away on Thursday I could not leave my room to say good-bye to you. Gray came and knocked, but I was not fit to be seen. If I hadn't looked so dreadfully I wouldn't have minded being ill. You know that a little illness would not have kept me from coming to say good-bye to you.

"So you went away, all alone with Gray. I remained in bed that day with the room darkened. Mother and Cecile were troubled but could not bring themselves to believe that my collapse was due to your going. It was not logical, you know, as we all expected to see you in a week or two in New York.

"So they had Dr. Vernam, and I took what he prescribed, and nobody attached any undue importance to the matter. So I was left to myself, and I lay and thought out what I had to do.

"Dear—I knew there was only one thing to do; I knew whither my love—our love—was carrying me—faster and faster—spite of all I'd said. Said! What are words beside such love as ours? What would be my affection for dad and mother beside my love for you? Would your loyalty and your dear self-denial continue to help me when they only make me love you more intensely?

"There is only one thing clear in all this pitiful confusion; I—whom they took and made their child—cannot sacrifice them! And yet I would!—oh, Garry!—I would for you. There was no safety for me at all as long as there was the slightest chance to sacrifice everything—everybody—and give myself to you.

"Listen! On the second day after you left I was sitting with mother and Cecile on the terrace. We were quietly discussing the closing of the house and other harmless domestic matters. All at once there swept over me such a terrible sense of desolation that I think I lost my mind; for the next thing I knew I was standing in my own room, dressed for travelling—with a hand-bag in my hand.

"It was my maid knocking that brought me to my senses: I had been going away to find you; that was all I could realise. And I sank on my bed, trembling; and presently fell into the grief-stricken lethargy which is all I know now of sleep.

"But when I woke to face the dreadful day again, I knew the time had come. And I went to mother that evening and told her.

"But, Garry, there is never to be any escape from deception, it seems; I had to make her think I wanted to acknowledge and take up life with my husband. My life is to be a living lie!...

"As I expected, mother was shocked and grieved beyond words—and, dearest, they are bitterly disappointed; they all had hoped it would be you.

"She says there must positively be another ceremony. I don't know how dad will take it—but mother is so good, so certain of his forgiving me.

"It wrings my heart—the silent astonishment of Cecile and Gray—and their trying to make the best of it, and mother, smiling for my sake, tender, forgiving, solicitous, and deep under all bitterly disappointed. Oh, well—she can bear that better than disgrace.

"I've been crying over this letter; that's what all this blotting means.

"Now I can never see you again; never touch your hand, never look into those brown eyes again—Garry! Garry!—never while life lasts.

"I ask forgiveness for all the harm my love has done to you, for all the pain it has caused you, for the unhappiness that, please God, will not endure with you too long.

"I have tried to pray that the pain will not last too long for you; I will try to pray that you may love another woman and forget all this unhappiness.

"Think of me as one who died, loving you. I cling to this paper as though it were your hand. But—

"Dearest—dearest—Good-by.

"SHIELA CARDROSS."

When Portlaw came in from his culinary conference he found Hamil scattering the black ashes of a letter among the cinders.

"Well, we're going to try an old English receipt on those trout," he began cheerfully—and stopped short at sight of Hamil's face.

"What's the matter?" he asked bluntly.

"Nothing."

Hamil returned to his chair and picked up a book; Portlaw looked at him for a moment, then, perplexed, sorted his mail and began to open the envelopes.

"Bills, bills," he muttered, "appeals for some confounded foundlings' hospital—all the eternal junk my flesh is heir to—and a letter from a lawyer—let them sue!—and a—a—hey! what the devil—what the—"

Portlaw was on his feet, startled eyes fairly protruding as he scanned incredulously the engraved card between his pudgy fingers.

"O Lord!" he bellowed; "it's all up! The entire bally business has gone up! That pup of a Louis!—Oh, there's no use!—Look here, Hamil! I tell you I can't believe it, I can't, and I won't—Look what that fool card says!"

And Hamil's stunned gaze fell on the engraved card:

"Mr. and Mrs. Neville Cardross have the honour of announcing the marriage of their daughter Shiela to Mr. Louis Malcourt."

The date and place followed.

Portlaw was making considerable noise over the matter, running about distractedly with little, short, waddling steps. Occasionally he aimed a kick at a stuffed arm-chair, which did not hurt his foot too much.

It was some time before he calmed enough to pout and fume and protest in his usual manner, appealing alternately to Heaven as witness and to Hamil for corroboration that he had been outrageously used.

"Now, who the devil could suspect him of such intention!" wailed poor Portlaw. "God knows, he was casual with the sex. There have been dozens of them, Hamil, literally dozens in every port!—from Mamie and Stella up to Gladys and Ethelberta! Yes, he was Harry to some and Reginald to others—high, low—and the game, Hamil—the game amused him; but so help me kings and aces! I never looked for this—never so help me; and I thought him as safe with the Vere-de-Veres as he was with the Pudding Sisters, Farina and Tapioca! And now"—passionately displaying the engraved card—"look who's here!... O pip! What's the use."

Dinner modified his grief; hope bubbled in the Burgundy, simmered in the soup, grew out of gravy like the sturdy, eternal weed she is, parasitic in the human breast.

"He's probably married a million or so," suggested Portlaw, mollified under the seductive appeal of a fruit salad dressed with a mixture containing nearly a hundred different ingredients. "If he has I don't see why he shouldn't build a camp next to mine. I'll give him the land—if he doesn't care to pay for it," he added cautiously. "Don't say anything to him about it, Hamil. After all, why shouldn't he pay for the land?... But if he doesn't want to—between you and me—I'll come within appreciable distance of almost giving him what land he needs.... O gee! O fizz! That damn Louis!... And I'm wondering—about several matters—"

After dinner Portlaw settled down by the fire, cigar lighted, and began to compose a letter to Malcourt, embodying his vivid ideas concerning a new house near his own for the bridal pair.

Hamil went out into the fresh April night. The young grass was wet under the stars; a delicate fragrance of new buds filled the air.

He had been walking for a long time, when the first far hint of thunder broke the forest silence. Later lightning began to quiver through the darkness; a wind awaking overhead whispered prophecy, wailed it, foreboding; then slowly the woods filled with the roar of the rain.

He was moving on, blindly, at random, conscious only of the necessity of motion. Where the underbrush halted him he sheered off into the open timber, feeling his way, falling sometimes, lying where he fell for a while till the scourge of necessity lashed him into motion again.

About midnight the rain increased to a deluge, slackened fitfully, and died out in a light rattle of thunder; star after star broke out through the dainty vapours overhead; the trees sighed and grew quiet. For a while drumming drops from the branches filled the silence with a musical tattoo, then there remained no sound save, far away in the darkness, the muffled roar of some brook, brimming bank-high with the April rain. And Hamil, soaked, exhausted, and believing he could sleep, went back to the house. Toward morning sleep came.

He awoke restless and depressed; and the next morning he was not well; and not quite as well the next, remaining in his room with a headache, pestered by Portlaw and retinues of servants bearing delicacies on trays.

He had developed a cold, not a very bad one, and on the third day he resumed his duties in the woods with Phelps and Baker, the surveyors, and young Hastings.

The dull, stupid physical depression hung on to him; so did his cold; and he found breathing difficult at night. The weather had turned very raw and harsh, culminating in a flurry of snow.

Then one morning he appeared at breakfast looking so ghastly that Portlaw became alarmed. It seemed to be rather late for that; Hamil's face was already turning a dreadful bluish white under his host's astonished gaze, and as the first chill seized him he rose from the table, reeling.

"I—I am sorry, Portlaw," he tried to say.

"What on earth have you got?" asked Portlaw in a panic; but Hamil could not speak.

They got him to the gardener's cottage as a precautionary measure, and telephoned to Utica for trained nurses, and to Pride's Fall for a doctor. Meanwhile, Hamil, in bed, was fast becoming mentally irresponsible as the infection spread, involving both lungs, and the fever in his veins blazed into a conflagration. That is one way that pneumonia begins; but it ought not to have made such brutally quick work of a young, healthy, and care-free man. There was not much chance for him by the next morning, and less the following night when the oxygen tanks arrived.

Portlaw, profoundly shocked and still too stunned by the swiftness of the calamity to credit a tragic outcome, spent the day in a heavily bewildered condition, wandering, between meals, from his house to the cottage where Hamil lay, and back again to the telephone.

He had physicians in consultation from Utica and Albany; he had nurses and oxygen; he had Miss Palliser on the telephone, first in New York, then at Albany, and finally at Pride's Fall, to tell her that Hamil was alive.

She arrived after midnight with Wayward. Hamil was still breathing—if it could be called by that name.

Toward dawn a long-distance call summoned Portlaw: Malcourt was on the end of the wire.

"Is Hamil ill up at your place?"

"He is," said Portlaw curtly.

"Very ill?"

"Very."

"How ill?"

"Well, he's not dead."

"Portlaw, is he dying?"

"They don't know yet."

"What is the sickness?"

"Pneumonia. I wish to heaven you were here!" he burst out, unable to suppress his smouldering irritation any longer.

"I was going to ask you if you wanted me—"

"You needn't ask such a fool question. Your house is here for you and the servants are eating their heads off. I haven't had your resignation and I don't expect it while we're in trouble.... Mrs. Malcourt will come with you, of course."

"Hold the wire."

Portlaw held it for a few minutes, then:

"Mr. Portlaw?"—scarcely audible.

"Is that you, Mrs. Malcourt?"

"Yes.... Is Mr. Hamil going to die?"

"We don't know, Mrs. Malcourt. We are doing all we can. It came suddenly; we were caught unprepared—"

"Suddenly, you say?"

"Yes, it hit him like a bullet. He ought to have broken the journey northward; he was not well when he arrived, but I never for a moment thought—"

"Mr. Portlaw—please!"

"Yes?"

"Is there a chance for him?"

"The doctors refuse to say so."

"Do they say there is no chance?"

"They haven't said that, Mrs. Malcourt. I think—"

"Please, Mr. Portlaw!"

"Yes, madam!"

"Will you listen very carefully, please?"

"Certainly—"

"Mr. Malcourt and I are leaving on the 10.20. You will please consult your time-table and keep us informed at the following stations—have you a pencil to write them down?... Are you ready now? Ossining, Hudson, Albany, Fonda, and Pride's Fall.... Thank you.... Mr. Malcourt wishes you to send the Morgan horses.... If there is any change in Mr. Hamil's condition before the train leaves the Grand Central at 10.20, let me know. I will be at the telephone station until the last moment. Telegrams for the train should be directed to me aboard "The Seminole"—the private car of Mr. Cardross.... Is all this clear?... Thank you."

With a confused idea that he was being ordered about too frequently of late Portlaw waddled off bedward; but sleep eluded him; he lay there watching through his window the light in the window of the sick-room where Hamil lay fighting for breath; and sometimes he quivered all over in scared foreboding, and sometimes the thought that Malcourt was returning seemed to ease for a moment the dread load of responsibility that was already playing the mischief with his digestion.

A curry had started it; a midnight golden-buck superimposed upon a miniature mince pie had, to his grief and indignation, continued an outrageous conspiracy against his liver begun by the shock of Hamil's illness. But what completed his exasperation was the indifference of the physicians attending Hamil who did not seem to appreciate the gravity of an impaired digestive system, or comprehend that a man who couldn't enjoy eating might as well be in Hamil's condition; and Portlaw angrily swallowed the calomel so indifferently shoved toward him and hunted up Wayward, to whom he aired his deeply injured feelings.

"What you need are 'Drover's Remedies,'" observed Wayward, peering at him through his spectacles; and Portlaw unsuspiciously made a memorandum of the famous live-stock and kennel panacea for future personal emergencies.

The weather was unfavourable for Hamil; a raw, wet wind rattled the windows; the east lowered thick and gray with hurrying clouds; volleys of chilly rain swept across the clearing from time to time.

Portlaw and Wayward sat most of the time in the big living-room playing "Canfield." There was nothing else to do except to linger somewhere within call, and wait. Constance Palliser remained near whichever nurse happened to be off duty, and close enough to the sick-room to shudder at what she heard from within, all day, all night, ceaselessly ominous, pitiable, heart-breaking.

At length Wayward took her away without ceremony into the open air.

"Look here, Constance, your sitting there and hearing such things isn't helping Garry. Lansdale is doing everything that can be done; Miss Race and Miss Clay are competent. You're simply frightening yourself sick—"

She protested, but he put her into a hooded ulster, buckled on her feet a pair of heavy carriage boots, and drew her arm under his, saying: "If there's a chance Garry is having it, and you've got to keep your strength.... I wish this mist would clear; Hooper telephoned to Pride's for the weather bulletin, but it is not encouraging."

They walked about for an hour and finally returned from the wet woodland paths to the bridge, leaning on the stone parapet together.

A swollen brook roared under the arches, carrying on its amber wave-crests tufts of green grass and young leaves and buds which the promise of summer had tenderly unfolded to the mercy of a ruthless flood.

"Like those young lives that go out too early," murmured Constance. "See that little wind-flower, Jim, uprooted, drowning—and that dead thing tumbling about half under water—"

Wayward laid a firm hand across hers.

"I don't mean to be morbid," she said with a pathetic upward glance, "but, Jim, it is too awful to hear him fighting for just—just a chance to breathe a little—"

"I think he's going to get well," said Wayward.

"Jim! Why do you think it? Has any—"

"No.... I just think it."

"Is there any reason—"

"None—except you."

His voice within the last month or two had almost entirely lost its indistinct and husky undertone; the clear resonant quality, which had always thrilled her a little as a young girl, seemed to be returning; and now she felt, faintly, the old response awaking within her.

"It is very sweet of you to believe he'll live because I love him," she said gently.

Wayward drew his hand from hers and, folding his arms, leaned on the parapet inspecting the turbid water through his spectacles.

"There are no fights too desperate to be won," he said. "The thing to do is to finish—still fighting!"

"Jim?"

"Yes."

This time her hand sought his, drew it toward her, and covered it with both of hers.

"Jim," she said tremulously, "there is something—I am horribly afraid—that—perhaps Garry is not fighting."

"Why?" he asked bluntly.

"There was an—an attachment—"

"A what?"

"An unfortunate affair; he was very deeply in love—"

"Not ridiculously, I hope!"

"I don't know what you mean.... He cared more than I have believed possible; I saw him in New York on his way here and, Jim, he must have known then, for he looked like death—"

"You mean he was in love with that Cardross girl?"

"Oh, yes, yes!... I do not understand the affair; but I tell you, Jim, the strangest part was that the girl loved him! If ever a woman was in love with a man, Shiela Cardross was in love with Garry! I tell you I know it; I am not guessing, not hazarding an opinion; I know it.... And she married Louis Malcourt!... And, Jim, I have been so frightened—so terrified—for Garry—so afraid that he might not care to fight—"

Wayward leaned there heavily and in silence. He was going to say that men do not do such things for women any longer, but he thought of the awful battle not yet ended which he had endured for the sake of the woman beside him; and he said nothing; because he knew that, without hope of her to help him, the battle had long since gone against him. But Garry had nothing to fight for, if what Constance said was true. And within him his latent distrust and contempt for Malcourt blazed up, tightening the stern lines of his sun-burnt visage.

"Portlaw says that Louis is coming to-night, and that young Mrs. Malcourt is with him," he observed.

"I know it.... I was wondering if there was any way we could use her—make use of her—"

"To stir up Garry to fight?"

"Y-yes—something like that—I am vague about it myself—if it could be done without anybody suspecting the—O Jim!—I don't know; I am only a half-crazed woman willing to do anything for my boy—"

"Certainly. If there's anything that might benefit Garry you need not hesitate on account of that little beast Malcourt—"

She said in her gentle, earnest way: "Louis Malcourt is so very strange. He has treated Virginia dreadfully; they were engaged—they must have been or she could not have gone all to pieces the way she has.... I cannot understand it, Jim—"

"What's Louis coming here for?"

"Mr. Portlaw begged him to come—"

"What for? Oh, well, I guess I can answer that for myself; it's to save Portlaw some trouble or other—"

"You are very hard on people—very intolerant, sometimes—"

"I have no illusions concerning the unselfishness of Billy Portlaw. Look at him tagging after the doctors and bawling for pills!—with Garry lying there! He hustled him into a cottage, too—"

"He was quite right, Jim, Garry is better off—"

"So's William. Don't tell me, Constance; he's always been the same; he never really cared for anybody in all his life except Louis Malcourt. But it's a jolly, fat, good-humoured beast, and excellent company aboard the Ariani!" ... He was silent a moment, then his voice deepened to a clear, gentle tone, almost tender: "You've been rained on enough, now; come in by the fire and I'll bring you the latest news from Garry."

But when he returned to the fire where Constance and Portlaw sat in silence, the report he brought was only negative. A third doctor from Albany arrived at nightfall and left an hour later. He was non-committal and in a hurry, and very, very famous.



CHAPTER XXI

REINFORCEMENTS

All day Portlaw had been telephoning and telegraphing the various stations along the New York Central Railroad, following the schedule from his time-table and from the memoranda given him by young Mrs. Malcourt; and now the big, double, covered buckboard and the fast horses, which had been sent to meet them at Pride's, was expected at any moment.

"At least," Portlaw confided with a subdued animation to Wayward, "we're going to have a most excellent dinner for them when they arrive. My Frenchman is doing the capons in Louis XI style—"

"Somebody," said Wayward pleasantly, "will do you in the same style some day." And he retired to dress, laughing in an odd way. But Portlaw searched in vain for the humour which he had contrived somehow to miss. He also missed Malcourt on such occasions—Malcourt whose nimble intelligence never missed a trick!

"Thank the Lord he's coming!" he breathed devoutly. "It's bad enough to have a man dying on the premises without having an earthly thing to do while he's doing it.... I can see no disrespect to Hamil if we play a few cards now and then."

His valet was buttoning him up when Malcourt arrived and walked coolly into his room.

"Louis! Damnation!" ejaculated Portlaw, purple with emotion.

"Especially the latter," nodded Malcourt. "They tell me, below, that Hamil is very sick; wait a moment!—Mrs. Malcourt is in my house; she is to have it for herself. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes—"

"All right. I take my old rooms here for the present. Tell Williams. Mrs. Malcourt has brought a maid and another trained nurse for emergencies. She wanted to; and that's enough."

"Lord, but I'm glad you've come!" said Portlaw, forgetting all the reproaches and sarcasms he had been laboriously treasuring to discharge at his superintendent.

"Thanks," said Malcourt drily. "And I say; we didn't know anybody else was here—"

"Only his aunt and Wayward—"

Malcourt cast a troubled glance around the room, repeating: "I didn't understand that anybody was here."

"What difference does that make? You're coming back to stay, aren't you?"

Malcourt looked at him. "That's supposed to be the excuse for our coming.... Certainly; I'm your superintendent, back from a fortnight's leave to get married in.... That's understood." ... And, stepping nearer: "There's hell to pay in town. Have you seen the papers?"

"Not to-day's—"

"They're down-stairs. Wormly, Hunter & Blake have failed—liabilities over three million. There's probably going to be a run on the Shoshone Securities Company; Andreas Hogg and Gumble Brothers have laid down on their own brokers and the Exchange has—"

"What!"

"A nice outlook, isn't it? Be careful what you say before Mrs. Malcourt; she doesn't realise that Cardross, Carrick & Co. may be involved."

Portlaw said with that simple self-centred dignity which characterised him in really solemn moments: "Thank God, I'm in an old-line institution and own nothing that can ever pass a dividend!"

"Even your hens pay their daily dole," nodded Malcourt, eyeing him.

"Certainly. If they don't, it's a fricassee for theirs!" chuckled Portlaw, in excellent humour over his own financial security in time of stress.

So they descended to the living-room together where Constance and Wayward stood whispering by the fire. Malcourt greeted them; they exchanged a few words in faultless taste, then he picked an umbrella from the rack and went across the lawn to his house where his bride of a fortnight awaited him. Portlaw rubbed his pudgy hands together contentedly.

"Now that Louis is back," he said to Wayward, "this place will be run properly again."

"Is it likely," asked Wayward, "that a man who has just married several millions will do duty as your superintendent in the backwoods?"

"Well," said Portlaw, with his head on one side, "do you know, it is extremely likely. And I have a vague idea that he will draw his salary with great regularity and promptness."

"What are you talking about?" said Wayward bluntly.

"I'll tell you. But young Mrs. Malcourt does not know—and she is not to be told as long as it can be avoided: Cardross, Carrick & Co. are in a bad way."

"How bad?"

"The worst—unless the Clearing House does something—"

"What!"

"—And it won't! Mark my words. Wayward, the Clearing House won't lift a penny's weight from the load on their shoulders. I know. There's a string of banks due to blow up; the fuse has been lighted, and it's up to us to stand clear—"

"Oh, hush!" whispered Constance in a frightened voice; the door swung open; a gust of chilly air sent the ashes in the fireplace whirling upward among the leaping flames.

Young Mrs. Malcourt entered the room.

Her gown, which was dark—and may have been black—set off her dead-white face and hands in a contrast almost startling. Confused for a moment by the brilliancy of the lamplight she stood looking around her; then, as Portlaw waddled forward, she greeted him very quietly; recognised and greeted Wayward, and then slowly turned toward Constance.

There was a pause; the girl took a hesitating step forward; but Miss Palliser met her more than half-way, took both her hands, and, holding them, looked her through and through.

Malcourt's voice broke in gravely:

"It is most unfortunate that my return to duty should happen under such circumstances. I do not think there is any man in the world for whom I have the respect—and affection—that I have for Hamil."

Wayward was staring at him almost insolently; Portlaw, comfortably affected, shook his head in profound sympathy, glancing sideways at the door where his butler always announced dinner. Constance had heard, but she looked only at young Mrs. Malcourt. Shiela alone had been unconscious of the voice of her lord and master.

She looked bravely back into the golden-brown eyes of Miss Palliser; and, suddenly realising that, somehow, this woman knew the truth, flinched pitifully.

But Constance crushed the slender, colourless hands in her own, speaking tremulously low:

"Perhaps he'll have a chance now. I am so thankful that you've come."

"Yes." Her ashy lips formed the word, but there was no utterance.

Dinner was announced with a decorous modulation befitting the circumstances.

Malcourt bore himself faultlessly during the trying function; Wayward was moody; his cynical glance through his gold-rimmed glasses resting now on Malcourt, now on Shiela. The latter ate nothing, which grieved Portlaw beyond measure, for the salad was ambrosial and the capon was truly Louis XI.

Later the men played Preference, having nothing else to do after the ladies left, Constance insisting on taking Shiela back to her own house, and Malcourt acquiescing in the best of taste.

The stars were out; a warm, sweet, dry wind had set in from the south-west.

"It was what we've prayed for," breathed Constance, pausing on the lawn. "It was what the doctors wanted for him. How deliciously warm it is! Oh, I hope it will help him!"

"Is that his cottage?" whispered Shiela.

"Yes.... His room is there where the windows are open.... They keep them open, you know.... Do you want to go in?"

"Oh, may I see him!"

"No, dear.... Only I often sit in the corridor outside.... But perhaps you could not endure it—"

"Endure what?"

"To hear—to listen—to his—breathing—"

"Let me go with you!" she whispered, clasping her hands, "let me go with you, Miss Palliser. I will be very quiet, I will do whatever you tell me—only let me go with you!"

Miss Clay, just released from duty, met them at the door.

"There is nothing to say," she said; "of course every hour he holds out is an hour gained. The weather is more favourable. Miss Race will show you the chart."

As Shiela entered the house the ominous sounds from above struck her like a blow; she caught her breath and stood perfectly still, one hand pressing her breast.

"That is not as bad as it has been," whispered Constance, and noiselessly mounted the stairs.

Shiela crept after her and halted as though paralysed when the elder woman pointed at a door which hung just ajar. Inside the door stood a screen and a shaded electric jet. A woman's shadow moved across the wall within.

Without the slightest noise Constance sank down on the hallway sofa; Shiela crept up close beside her, closer, when the dreadful sounds broke out again, trembling in every limb, pressing her head convulsively against the elder woman's arm.

Young Dr. Lansdale came up-stairs an hour later, nodded to Constance, looked sharply at Shiela, then turned to the nurse who had forestalled him at the door. A glance akin to telepathy flashed between physician and nurse, and the doctor turned to Miss Palliser:

"Would you mind asking Miss Clay to come back?" he said quietly. "Oh!—has she gone to bed?"

Shiela was on her feet: "I—I have brought a trained nurse," she said; "the very best—from Johns Hopkins—"

"I should be very glad to have her for a few moments," said the doctor, looking at the chart by the light of the hall lamp.

Shiela sped down the stairs like a ghost; the nurse re-entered the room; the doctor turned to follow, and halted short as a hand touched his arm.

"Dr. Lansdale?"

He nodded pleasantly.

"Does it do any good—when one is very, very ill—to see—"

The doctor made a motion with his head. "Who is that young girl?" he asked coolly.

"Mrs. Malcourt—"

"Oh! I thought it might have been this Shiela he is always talking about in his delirium—"

"It is," whispered Constance.

For a moment they looked one another in the eyes; then a delicate colour stole over the woman's face.

"I'm afraid—I'm afraid that my boy is not making the fight he could make," she whispered.

"Why not?"

She was speechless.

"Why not!" ... And in a lower voice: "This corridor is a confessional. Miss Palliser—if that helps you any."

She said: "They were in love."

"Oh! Are they yet?"

"Yes."

"Oh! She married the other man?"

"Yes."

"Oh!"

Young Lansdale wheeled abruptly and entered the sick-room. Shiela returned in a few minutes with her nurse, a quick-stepping, cool-eyed young woman in spotless uniform. A few minutes afterward the sounds indicated that oxygen was being used.

An hour later Miss Race came into the hallway and looked at Shiela.

"Mr. Hamil is conscious," she said. "Would you care to see him for a second?"

A dreadful fear smote her as she crouched there speechless.

"The danger of infection is slight," said the nurse—and knew at the same instant that she had misunderstood. "Did you think I meant he is dying?" she added gently as Shiela straightened up to her slender height.

"Is he better?" whispered Constance.

"He is conscious," said the nurse patiently. "He knows"—turning to Shiela—"that you are here. You must not speak to him; you may let him see you for a moment. Come!"

In the shadowy half-light of the room Shiela halted at a sign from the nurse; the doctor glanced up, nodding almost imperceptibly as the girl's eyes fell upon the bed.

How she did it—what instinct moved her, what unsuspected reserve of courage prompted her, she never understood; but looking into the dreadful eyes of death itself there in the sombre shadows of the bed, she smiled with a little gesture of gay recognition, then, turning, passed from the room.

"Did he know you?" motioned Constance.

"I don't know—I don't know.... I think he was—dying—before he saw me—"

She was shuddering so violently that Constance could scarcely hold her, scarcely guide her down the stairs, across the lawn toward her own house. The doctor overtook and passed them on his way to his own quarters, but he only bowed very pleasantly, and would have gone on except for the soft appeal of Constance.

"Miss Palliser," he said, "I don't know—if you want the truth. You know all that I do; he is conscious—or was. I expect he will be, at intervals, now. This young lady behaved admirably—admirably! The thing to do is to wait."

He glanced at Shiela, hesitated, then:

"Would it be any comfort to learn that he knew you?"

"Yes.... Thank you."

The doctor nodded and said in a hearty voice: "Oh, we've got to pull him through somehow. That's what I'm here for." And he went away briskly across the lawn.

"What are you going to do?" asked Constance in a low voice.

"I don't know; write to my father, I think."

"You ought not to sit up after such a journey."

"Do you suppose I could sleep to-night?"

Constance drew her into her arms; the girl clung to her, head hidden on her breast.

"Shiela, Shiela," she murmured, "you can always come to me. Always, always!—for Garry's sake.... Listen, child: I do not understand your tragedy—his and yours—I only know you loved each other.... Love—and a boy's strange ways in love have always been to me a mystery—a sad one, Shiela.... For once upon a time—there was a boy—and never in all my life another. Dear, we women are all born mothers to men—and from birth to death our heritage is motherhood—grief for those of us who bear—sadness for us who shall never bear—mothers to sorrow everyone.... Do you love him?"

"Yes."

"That is forbidden you, now."

"It was forbidden me from the first; yet, when I saw him I loved him. What was I to do?"

Constance waited, but the girl had fallen silent.

"Is there more you wish to tell me?"

"No more."

She bent and kissed the cold cheek on her shoulder.

"Don't sit up, child. If there is any reason for waking you I will come myself."

"Thank you."

So they parted, Constance to seek her room and lie down partly dressed; Shiela to the new quarters still strange and abhorrent to her.

Her maid, half dead with fatigue, slept in a chair, and young Mrs. Malcourt aroused her and sent her off to bed. Then she roamed through the rooms, striving to occupy her mind with the negative details of the furnishing; but it was all drearily harmless, unaccented anywhere by personal taste, merely the unmeaning harmony executed by a famous New York decorator, at Portlaw's request—a faultless monotony from garret to basement.

There was a desk in one room; ink in the well, notepaper bearing the name of Portlaw's camp. She looked at it and passed on to her bedroom.

But after she had unlaced and, hair unbound, stood staring vacantly about her, she remembered the desk; and drawing on her silken chamber-robe, went into the writing-room.

At intervals, during her writing, she would rise and gaze from the window across the darkness where in the sick-room a faint, steady glow remained; and she could see the white curtains in his room stirring like ghosts in the soft night wind and the shadow of the nurse on wall and ceiling.

"Dear, dear dad and mother," she wrote; "Mr. Portlaw was so anxious for Louis to begin his duties that we decided to come at once, particularly as we both were somewhat worried over the serious illness of Mr. Hamil.

"He is very, very ill, poor fellow. The sudden change from the South brought on pneumonia. I know that you both and Gray and Cecile and Jessie will feel as sorry as I do. His aunt, Miss Palliser, is here. To-night I was permitted to see him. Only his eyes were visible and they were wide open. It is very dreadful, very painful, and has cast a gloom over our gaiety.

"To-night Dr. Lansdale said that he would pull him through. I am afraid he said it to encourage Miss Palliser.

"This is a beautiful place—" She dropped her pen with a shudder, closed her eyes, groped for it again, and forced herself to continue—"Mr. Portlaw is very kind. The superintendent's house is large and comfortable. Louis begins his duties to-morrow. Everything promises to be most interesting and enjoyable—" She laid her head in her arms, remaining so, motionless until somewhere on the floor below a clock struck midnight."

At last she managed to go on:

"Dad, dear; what you said to Louis about my part of your estate was very sweet and generous of you; but I do not want it. Louis and I have talked it over in the last fortnight and we came to the conclusion that you must make no provision for me at present. We wish to begin very simply and make our own way. Besides I know from something I heard Acton say that even very wealthy people are hard pressed for ready money; and so Phil Gatewood acted as our attorney and Mr. Cuyp's firm as our brokers and now the Union Pacific and Government bonds have been transferred to Colonel Vetchen's bank subject to your order—is that the term?—and the two blocks on Lexington Avenue now stand in your name, and Cuyp, Van Dine, and Siclen sold all those queer things for me—the Industrials, I think you call them—and I endorsed a sheaf of certified checks, making them all payable to your order.

"Dad, dear—I cannot take anything of that kind from you.... I am very, very tired of the things that money buys. All I shall ever care for is the quiet of unsettled places, the silence of the hills, where I can study and read and live out the life I am fitted for. The rest is too complex, too tiresome to keep up with or even to watch from my windows.

"Dear dad and dear mother, I am a little anxious about what Acton said to Gray—about money troubles that threaten wealthy people. And so it makes me very happy to know that the rather overwhelming fortune which you so long ago set aside for me to accumulate until my marriage is at last at your disposal again. Because Gray told me that Acton was forced to borrow such frightful sums at such ruinous rates. And now you need borrow no more, need you?

"You have been so good to me—both of you. I am afraid you won't believe how dearly I love you. I don't very well see how you can believe it. But it is true.

"The light in Mr. Hamil's sick-room seems to be out. I am going to ask what it means.

"Good-night, my darling two—I will write you every day.

"SHIELA."

She was standing, looking out across the night at the darkened windows of the sick-room, her sealed letter in her hand, when she heard the lower door open and shut, steps on the stairs—and turned to face her husband.