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.

“W-what is it?” she faltered.

“What is what?” he asked coolly.

“The reason there is no light in Mr. Hamil’s windows?”

“He’s asleep,” said Malcourt in a dull voice.

“Louis!  Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes....  I’d tell you if he were dead.  He isn’t.  Lansdale thinks there is a slight change for the better.  So I came to tell you.”

Every tense nerve and muscle in her body seemed to give way at the same instant as she dropped to the lounge.  For a moment her mind was only a confused void, then the routine instinct of self-control asserted itself; she made the effort required of her, groping for composure and self-command.

“He is better, you say?”

“Lansdale said there was a change which might be slightly favourable....  I wish I could say more than that, Shiela.”

“But—­he is better, then?”—­pitifully persistent.

Malcourt looked at her a moment.  “Yes, he is better.  I believe it.”

For a few moments they sat there in silence.

“That is a pretty gown,” he said pleasantly.

“What!  Oh!” Young Mrs. Malcourt bent her head, gazing fixedly at the sealed letter in her hand.  The faint red of annoyance touched her pallor—­perhaps because her chamber-robe suggested an informality between them that was impossible.