The old-fashioned Deming mansion in Evansville, so often a witness to scenes of gayety or sorrow or boredom, was to-day shrouded in a singular and terrible air of hushed expectancy. Voices were low, every action was tense. Old Doctor Irvin, curator of the family's health these two-score years and more, had come over from Louisville, and through the high halls flitted two white-capped nurses. The servants were tremulous, afraid, gulping in their throats. Thus Armstrong found the place when he arrived on the noon train from New York. Deming took him into the library, and to his flood of questions lifted a protesting hand. Dorothy was ill before her time, and no one knew what was happening upstairs. "Irvin's got those rooms to himself--he's turned us all out and has refused to give out any information," said Deming brokenly. "Something's wrong, we know, but there's nothing to be done. Irvin has never lost a case in sixty years of practice--well, well, hope for the best. How did things turn out? No more trouble?" Armstrong, pacing up and down the room, laughed harshly. "No more trouble," he repeated, almost bitterly. He was fresh from victory, master of those who had sought his destruction; destiny lay in his hand, yet he turned on Deming with a swift irony. "The trouble's over. We smashed Macgowan--but that devil has a most uncanny brain. The very last thing, he gave me a word and a look that I'll never forget. 'How long,' he said to me, with his damnable sneer, 'how long will these folks let you go on playing with their money?' That was all. And it started me to thinking--" Armstrong resumed his nervous stride up and down. Deming nodded slowly, wearily. "The easiest thing on earth, Reese, is for a man to fool himself--" At this instant the door swung open. The nurse appeared, but shook her head at Deming. "The doctor wants Mr. Armstrong upstairs." Armstrong left the library and hastened to the upper hall. There he found old Doctor Irvin, outside the closed door of Dorothy's room. Irvin swung around to meet Armstrong, faced him, put hands to shoulders with a sudden air of challenging defiance. In the narrowed, keen old eyes Armstrong read a momentary flare of vivid enmity which astounded him. "What is it?" he demanded swiftly. "Is she so ill--" "You call yourself a husband?" said Irvin, the Donegal burr coming harshly from his tongue. "What've ye been lookin' at all these months, eh? Why haven't ye been gripping at the big things instead o' the dollars? No, not you. Grip, grip, grip! That's all ye can see or do. Well, there's one thing you can't grip, my man." "What d'you mean?" Armstrong exclaimed, wondering. "Is Dorothy--"