She dreaded to have him know that the die was irrevocably cast, although his own words had told her that he apprehended it; but she absolutely feared the first passionate outbreak when she should give him those other papers that had but just arrived.

When he began to grow more calm, and to realize the comfort of being once more before his own hearthstone Lady Linton stole softly away to confer with the housekeeper about preparing him something specially tempting for his supper.

She was absent perhaps fifteen minutes, and was about to return to him, when she was startled by a heavy fall on the floor above her.

Her heart told her what had caused it, and she hurried up stairs with all the speed that fear could lend to her feet, and burst into the library, to find her brother stretched lifeless upon the floor, an open paper clutched tightly in his hand, while John, the faithful butler, was bending over him in an agony of terror.

“Send for Sir Herbert Randal at once, then come back to me,” commanded her ladyship, as she stooped to lift her brother’s head to place a cushion under it and loosen his necktie.

John sped to do her bidding, and during his absence Lady Linton succeeded in removing that tell-tale document from Sir William’s hand, and locking it away from all inquisitive eyes; for her first thought was that there must be no scandal over the affair.

Few knew of his marriage.  She had persisted in keeping still about it, in spite of all his orders to the contrary, and after his return from his fruitless search for Virgie, he had been far too sensitive upon the subject to talk of it himself, and thus almost everybody believed him to be still a single man.  Hence Lady Linton’s anxiety that nothing should be known regarding the divorce.

When John returned to her she summoned other servants and had Sir William carried to his own rooms, where she and the housekeeper applied all remedies that were at hand to revive him.

When the physician arrived he had recovered from his swoon, but was in a raging fever, and wild with delirium.

Sir Herbert pronounced his illness to be brain fever of a serious type, and Lady Linton knew, from the grave look on the wise man’s face, that he had but very little hope of his recovery.

* * * * *

When Virgie left the hotel on the morning after Mr. Eldridge requested her to vacate her rooms, she drove to a quiet street, where she engaged lodgings for a few days, until she could arrange her plans for the future.  She then gave notice at the bank where her money was deposited that she should draw it all on a certain date.  As soon as she received it she purchased a ticket for San Francisco, and a week from the time of receiving Lady Linton’s cruel letter she was rolling over the Central Pacific Railroad toward her former home, intent upon only one purpose—­that of gaining indisputable proof of her lawful marriage, in order to shield her child from wrong and shame.