e
fifth and the sixth, and then the seventh dawns.

Florence Delmaine, who has been half-distracted with conflicting fears
and emotions, and who has been sitting in her room apart from the
others, with her head bent down and resting on her hands, suddenly
raising her eyes, sees Dora standing before her.

The widow is looking haggard and hollow-eyed. All her dainty freshness
has gone, and she now looks in years what in reality she is, close on
thirty-five. Her lips are pale and drooping, her cheeks colorless; her
whole air is suggestive of deep depression, the result of sleepless
nights and days filled with grief and suspense of the most poignant
nature.

"Alas, how well she loves him too!" thinks Florence, contemplating her
in silence. Dora, advancing, lays her hand upon the table near Florence,
and says, in a hurried impassioned tone--

"Oh, Florence, what has become of him? What has been done to him? I have
tried to hide my terrible anxiety for the past two miserable days, but
now I feel I must speak to some one or go mad!"

She smites her hands together, and, sinking into a chair, looks as if
she is going to faint. Florence, greatly alarmed, rises from her chair,
and, running to her, places her arm around her as though to support her.
But Dora repulses her almost roughly and motions her away.

"Do not touch me!" she cries hoarsely. "Do not come near me; you, of
all people, should be the last to come to my assistance! Besides, I am
not here to talk about myself, but of him. Florence, have you any
suspicion?"

Dora leans forward and looks scrutinizingly at her cousin, as though
fearing, yet hoping to get an answer in the affirmative. But Florence
shakes her head.

"I have no suspicion--none," she answers sadly. "If I had should I not
act upon it, whatever it might cost me?"

"Would you," asks Dora eagerly, as though impressed by her companion's
words--"whatever it might cost you?"

Her manner is so strange that Florence pauses before replying.

"Yes," she says at last. "No earthly consideration should keep me from
using any knowledge I might by accident or otherwise become possessed of
to lay bare this mystery. Dora," she cries suddenly, "if you know
anything, I implore, I entreat you to say so."

"What should I know?" responds the widow, recoiling.

"You loved him too," says Florence piteously, now more than ever
convinced that Dora is keeping something hidden from her. "For the sake
of that love, dis