door of the hall bedroom.  It was the last thing he remembered,—­that sharp, pale face peering out from the blackness of the inner chamber as his grasp loosened on the world and he drifted off on the tide of a dream.  A narrow white hand, like a child’s, seemed to be laid against his breast.  It was not Margaret’s hand, and yet it was hers.  No, it was the plaster model he had made that idle summer afternoon, years and years before he had ever thought of loving her.  Strange for it to be there!  Then Richard began wondering how the gold ring would look in the slender forefinger.  He unfastened the leather bag and took out the ring.  He was vainly trying to pass it over the first joint of the dead white finger, when the cast slipped from his hold and fell with a crash to the floor.  Richard gave a shudder, and opened his eyes.  Brigida was noiselessly approaching Torrini’s bedside.  Torrini still slept.  It was broad day.  Through the uncurtained window Richard saw the blue sky barred with crimson.

XXIV

“Richard did come home last night, after all,” said Mr. Slocum, with a flustered air, seating himself at the breakfast table.

Margaret looked up quickly.

“I just met Peters on the street, and he told me,” added Mr. Slocum.

“Richard returned last night, and did not come to us!”

“It seems that he watched with Torrini,—­the man is going to die.”

“Oh,” said Margaret, cooling instantly.  “That was like Richard; he never thinks of himself first.  I would not have had him do differently.  Last evening you were filled with I don’t know what horrible suspicions, yet see how simply everything explains itself.”

“If I could speak candidly, Margaret, if I could express myself without putting you into a passion, I would tell you that Richard’s passing the night with that man has given me two or three ugly ideas.”

“Positively, papa, you are worse than Mr. Taggett.”

“I shall not say another word,” replied Mr. Slocum.  Then he unfolded the newspaper lying beside him, and constructed a barrier against further colloquy.

An hour afterwards, when Richard threw open the door of his private workshop, Margaret was standing in the middle of the room waiting for him.  She turned with a little cry of pleasure, and allowed Richard to take her in his arms, and kept to the spirit and the letter of the promise she had made to herself.  If there was an unwonted gravity in Margaret’s manner, young Shackford was not keen enough to perceive it.  All that morning, wherever he went, he carried with him a sense of Margaret’s face resting for a moment against his shoulder, and the happiness of it rendered him wholly oblivious to the constrained and chilly demeanor of her father when they met.  The interview was purposely cut short by Mr. Slocum, who avoided Richard the rest of the day with a persistency that must have ended in forcing itself upon his notice, had he not been so engrossed by the work which had accumulated during his absence.