later Clarke knocked at the sitting-room door. "Julia,
here is a message I want you to give to Viola."

As she opened to him he faced her, pale and tremulous, all his anger,
all his resolution gone. "She was unjust to me," he said, humbly;
"take her this." He extended a folded leaf of paper in a hand that
partook of the pallor of his face.

"You poor boy," she exclaimed, her heart wrung by his suffering, "you
mustn't mind what she said--it was only a girlish pet."

"Mother," he cried, passionately, "to lose her now would kill me. She
is my hope, my stay, my God! She has stabbed me to the heart to-night.
Did she mean it? She can't mean it!"

She patted him on the shoulder. "Go to bed, laddie, it's only a mood.
She will be all sunshine to-morrow. It's only a reaction from a
wearisome day--be patient and don't worry."

"She tortured me deliberately," he went on, wildly. "She let that man
take her hand. She smiled at him in a way that set my brain on fire. I
tried to be calm. I didn't intend to speak harshly, but I wanted to
kill him when he said good-night to her. May God eternally damn his
soul if he tries to steal her from me!"

She recoiled from his fury. "Tony! What are you saying?"

"I mean it! Do you think I will submit to his treachery? I told him
she was mine, and yet he took her hand--he leaned to her--he looked
into her face." His eyes blazed with such wild light that the gentle
woman shrank and shivered.

"Tony, you are letting your imagination run away with you. Go to bed
this instant," she commanded, in a voice that trembled.

He went away at last, weeping, miserably maudlin, almost incoherent,
and when she closed and locked the door upon him she dropped into a
chair, and for the first time since her husband's death gave way to
tears of bewilderment and despair.

XVI

THE HOUSE OF DISCORD

Surely Simeon's house that night was a place of tormenting and
tumult--the meeting-place of spirits whose dispositions were to evil
fully inclined, and of mortals whose natures were upon the edge of
combat. Viola, in full revolt, would not even permit her mother to
come to her. Clarke, in an agony of love and hate, paced his room or
sat in dejected heap before his grate. Mrs. Lambert, realizing that
something sorrowful was advancing upon her, lay awake a long time
hoping her daughter would relent and steal in to kiss her good-night,
but she did not, and at last the waters of sleep rolled in to submerge