." Her smile turned almost arch. "We will travel; there
are great physicians abroad."

"A sister--not a wife?"

"Your wife in time--Ah, it will mean a new courtship and--Anitra is a
different woman from Georgian--she has suffered--you will love her
better."

"O God! Harper, are we living, awake, sane? Help me at this crisis. I do
not know where I am or what this is she really asks."

"She asks the impossible. She asks what you can, perhaps, give, but not
what I can. You forget that this deception calls for connivance on my
part, and whatever you may think of me or my profession, deception is
foreign to my nature and very repugnant to me."

"And you refuse?"

"Mrs. Ransom, I must."

The hope which had held her up, the life which had returned to body and
spirit since this prospect of a possible future had dawned upon her,
faded from glance and smile.

"Then good-by, Roger, we shall never have those happy days together of
which we have often dreamt. I may stay with you a week, a month, a year,
but the horror of a great fear will be over us, and never, never can we
know joy."

She threw herself into her husband's arms; she clung to him.

"One moment," she cried, "one moment of perfect happiness before the
shadow falls. Oh, how I must love you, Roger, to say such words, to think
such thoughts, with the body of the brother I loved so deeply once, lying
there dead before us, killed by his own hand."

Ransom softly drew her aside where her eyes could not fall upon the bed.

Harper stopped still where he was, the picture of gloom and uncertainty.

"It must be settled now," said Ransom. "As we leave this room, our
relations must remain."

"I cannot but think your fears all folly," muttered Harper. "Yet the
responsibility you force upon me is terrible. If it were not for that
will! How can I present it to the Surrogate when I know the testator is
still alive?"

"You need not. I will do that," said Ransom.

"And the property! Given to a man we none of us know. Property that is
not legally his."

"I will make it so," cried Georgian with a burst of new and
uncontrollable hope as she saw, as she thought, this conscientious lawyer
yielding. "There is paper here; draw up a deed of gift. I will sign it
and you shall hold it so that whether I live or die, Auchincloss' title
to his money shall be absolute. Thus much I wish to do, that Alfred's
life should not have been sacrificed for nothing."

"Let me think."

Ha