lamentations. He could
read the words "Sheila Mackenzie" on the small silver plate: she had
been taken away from all association with him and his name. And who was
this old man with the white hair and the white beard, whose hands were
tightly clenched, and his lips firm, and a look as of death in the
sunken and wild eyes? Mackenzie was gray a year before--

"Ingram," he said suddenly, and his voice startled his companion, "do
you think it is possible to make Sheila happy again?"

"How can I tell?" said Ingram.

"You used to know everything she could wish--everything she was thinking
about. If you find her out now, will you get to know? Will you see what
I can do--not by asking her to come back, not by trying to get back my
own happiness, but anything, it does not matter what it is, I can do for
her? If she would rather not see me again, I will stay away. Will you
ask her, Ingram?"

"We have got to find her first," said his companion.

"A young girl like that," said Lavender, taking no heed of the
objection, "surely she cannot always be unhappy. She is so young and
beautiful, and takes so much interest in many things: surely she may
have a happy life."

"She might have had."

"I don't mean with me," said Lavender, with his haggard face looking
still more haggard in the increasing light. "I mean anything that can be
done--any way of life that will make her comfortable and contented
again--anything that I can do for that. Will you try to find it out,
Ingram?"

"Oh yes, I will," said the other, who had been thinking with much
foreboding of all these possibilities ever since they left Sloane
street, his only gleam of hope being a consciousness that this time at
least there could be no doubt of Frank Lavender's absolute sincerity, of
his remorse, and his almost morbid craving to make reparation if that
were still possible.

They reached the house at last. There was a dim orange-colored light
shining in the passage. Lavender went on and threw open the door of the
small room which Sheila had adorned, asking Ingram to follow him. How
wild and strange this chamber looked, with the wan glare of the dawn
shining in on its barbaric decorations from the sea-coast--on the shells
and skins and feathers that Sheila had placed around! That white light
of the morning was now shining everywhere into the silent and desolate
house. Lavender found Ingram a bedroom, and then he turned away, not
knowing what to do. He looked into Sh