She invoked the image of her baby, the glory of the few days she had known it. But a bitter tide of resentment overwhelmed the memory of that brief exaltation. If she was to be saved, why had not the baby been spared? Those who shared her secret had attempted to console her by assuring her that its death was a mercy for all concerned. She had not answered them; but her grief was cut with contempt for their lack of vision. The baby might have cost her her social position, but it would have stood between her soul and perdition. It had been taken--by One who was supposed to know the needs of all His creatures. Therefore it was only reasonable to assume that He wished her to be destroyed. She thought of nothing else, but cunningly pretended to be absorbed in her books. There came a night when her nerves shrieked until her brain surged with the din of them, and her hands clutched at the air, her eyes hardened and expanded with greed, her lips were forced apart by her panting breath. She jerked the stopper out of a bottle of cologne and swallowed a quarter of the contents, then flung her wraps about her, stole downstairs and out of the house, found a carriage, and was driven to South Park. III Two weeks later she sat huddled over the fire in the library. Her face was yellow; her eyes were sunken and dull; her hands trembled. She looked thirty-five. In her lap lay a letter from Dudley Thorpe. He and his brother, at the risk of their lives, had got through the lines and reached New York. The excitement, fatigue, and exposure had nearly killed Harold, who was in a hospital in a precarious condition. Thorpe could not leave him. He implored her to come on to New York at once; and he had never written a more tender and passionate letter. Cochrane opened the door, and announced that Dr. Clough had called. "Tell him to come here," she said. Dr. Clough wore his usual jaunty air, and he made no comment on her appearance; he had come straight from Miss Shropshire. "Sit down," said Nina, curtly, interrupting his demonstrations. "You come at the right moment. I was about to send for you." "My dear cousin Nina! I hope there is no--" "Let me talk, please. Do you wish to marry me?" Clough caught his breath. He flushed, despite his nerve. "Of course I do," he stammered. "What a question! Certainly there never was a woman so original. It is like you to settle matters in your own way." "Don't delude yourself for a moment that I even like you. Of all the men I have ever known, the sort of person I take you to be has my most unmitigated contempt. It is for that reason I marry you. I must marry some one at once to keep myself from ruining the life of Dudley Thorpe. I choose you, because, in the first place, I am so vile a thing that no punishment is severe enough for me; and, in the second, Fate has acquitted herself so brilliantly in regard to my humble self that I feel a certain satisfaction in giving her all she wants."