r was huddled in an armchair, staring at the
gasping form on the bed. Magdalena shuddered. His face was more terrible
to look on than the sick man's.

"It's pneumonia, of course," said Mrs. Yorba, in the hushed whisper of
the sick room, although her hard voice was little more sympathetic in
its lower register. "He was wet through when he came home this
afternoon. I should think it had rained enough for one year."

The doctor came and eased the sufferer with morphine; but he gave the
watchers no hope.

"He has no lungs, anyhow," he said. "This abrupt climax is rather a
mercy than otherwise."

Magdalena remained by the bedside during all of the next day. Early in
the morning a telegram came from Mrs. Polk, saying that she was about to
start on a special train. The message was read to her husband, and he
whispered to Magdalena, "I should live until she came,--if she took a
week." That was the only remark he made until late in the day, when he
motioned to Magdalena to bend her ear to his lips. "Don't waste your
youth," he whispered; and then he coloured slightly, as if ashamed of
having broken the reticence of a lifetime.

Don Roberto barely moved from the chair which commanded a view of the
dying man's face. His own shrank visibly. He neither ate nor drank. His
sunken terror-struck eyes seemed staring through the passing face on the
high pillows into an inferno beyond.

"I declare, he gives me the horrors, and I'm not a nervous woman," said
Mrs. Yorba to her daughter. "I never could understand your father's
queer ways. Who would ever have thought that he could care for anyone
like that? Poor Hiram! No one can feel worse than I do; but he has to
go, and as the doctor says, this is a mercy; there's no use acting as if
you had lost your last friend on earth."

"Perhaps that's the way papa feels; and as you say, he's not like other
people."

The only other person in the sick-room was Colonel Belmont. He came over
as soon as he heard of the attack, and sat on the other side of the bed
all day, when he was not attempting to make himself useful. His old
comrade smiled when he entered; but Mr. Polk took little notice of
anyone. Occasionally his eyes rested with an expression of profound pity
on the face of his brother-in-law: once or twice he pressed Magdalena's
hand; but his attention chiefly centred on the door, although he knew
that his wife could not arrive until after midnight.

Magdalena went to the train to meet