“Certainly, my dear; go, Powers, and if Mr. Worth is in his room, let him know that dinner is ready.”

Powers went, but soon returned with the information that Mr. Worth was neither in his room nor in the office, nor anywhere else in the house.

“Some professional business has detained him; he will be home after a while,” said the judge.

But Bee was anxious, and when dinner was over she went upstairs to a window that overlooked the Avenue, and watched; but, of course, in vain.  Then with the restlessness common to intense anxiety she came down and went into the shrubbery to walk.  She paced about very uneasily until she had tired herself, and then turned towards a secluded arbor at the bottom of the grounds to rest herself.  She put aside the vines that overhung the doorway and entered.

What did she see?

Ishmael extended upon the bench, with the late afternoon sun streaming through a crevice in the arbor, shining full upon his face, which was also plagued with flies!

She had found him then, but how?

At first she thought he was only sleeping; and she was about to withdraw from the arbor when the sound of his breathing caught her ear and alarmed her, and she crept back and cautiously approached and looked over him.

His face was deeply flushed; the veins of his temples were swollen; and his breathing was heavy and labored.  In her fright Bee caught up his hand and felt his pulse.  It was full, hard, and slowly throbbing.  She thought that he was very ill—­dangerously ill, and she was about to spring up and rush to the house for help, when, in raising her head, she happened to catch his breath.

And all the dreadful truth burst upon Bee’s mind, and overwhelmed her with mortification and despair!

With a sudden gasp and a low wail she sank on her knees at his side and dropped her head in her open hands and sobbed aloud.

“Oh, Ishmael, Ishmael, is it so?  Have I lived to see you thus?  Can a woman reduce a man to this?  A proud and selfish woman have such power so to mar God’s noblest work?  Oh, Ishmael, my love, my love!  I love you better than I love all the world besides!  And I love you better than anyone else ever did or ever can; yet, yet, I would rather see you stark dead before me than to see you thus!  Oh, Heaven!  Oh, Saviour!  Oh, Father of Mercies, have pity on him and save him!” she cried.

And she wrung her hands and bent her head to look at him more closely, and her large tears dropped upon his face.

He stirred, opened his eyes, rolled them heavily, became half conscious of someone weeping over him, turned clumsily and relapsed into insensibility.

At his first motion Bee had sprung up and fled from the arbor, at the door of which she stood, with throbbing heart, watching him, through the vines.  She saw that he had again fallen into that deep and comatose sleep.  And she saw that his flushed and fevered face was more than ever exposed to the rays of the sun and the plague of the flies.  And she crept cautiously back again, and drew her handkerchief from her pocket and laid it over his face, and turned and hurried, broken-spirited from the spot.