st of the Melroses!"

At seven o'clock in the morning Norma, exhausted with excitement and
emotion, took a hot bath, and finding things unchanged in the sick-room,
except that the lights had been extinguished, and the winter daylight
was drearily mingling with firelight, went on downstairs for coffee and
for one more conference with the blinking nurses and the tired old
doctor. She found herself too shaken to eat, but the hot drink was
wonderfully soothing and stimulating, and for the first time, as she
stood looking out into the street from the dining-room window, a sense
of power and pride began to thrill her. Old people must die, of course,
and after this sad and dark scene was over--then what? Then what? Then
she would be in Leslie's long-envied place, the heiress, the important
figure among all the changes that followed.

"If you please, Mrs. Sheridan----!" It was Joseph, haggard and white,
who had come softly behind her to interrupt her thoughts. She glanced
with quick apprehension toward the hall stairway. There had been a
change----?

"No, it was the telephone, Miss." Norma, puzzled by the old butler's
stricken air, went to the instrument. It was Miss Slater.

"Norma," Miss Slater said, agitatedly, "is Mr. Liggett--there?"

"I think he's with Aunt Annie, upstairs, but he's going home about
eight," Norma answered. "There is no change. Is Aunt Alice awake? Mr.
Liggett wanted to be there when she woke!"

"No--she's not awake," the other woman's voice said, solemnly. "She went
to sleep like a child last night, Norma. But about half an hour ago I
went in--she hadn't called me--it was just instinct, I suppose! She was
lying--hadn't changed her position even----"

"_What's that!_" Norma cried, in a whisper that was like a scream. The
grave voice and the sudden break of tears chilled her to the soul.

"We've had Doctor Merrill here," Miss Slater said. "Norma, you'll have
to tell him--God help us all! She's gone!"

CHAPTER XXXI

Mrs. Melrose never spoke again, or showed another flicker of the clear
and normal intelligence that she had shown in the night. But she still
breathed, and the long, wet day dragged slowly, in the big, mournful old
house, until late in the unnatural afternoon. People--all sorts of
people--were coming and going now, and being answered, or being turned
away; a few privileged old friends came softly up the carpeted stairs,
and cried quietly with Annie, who looked unbelievably old