She went to her desk and wrote a hasty note, requesting John to come home to her immediately. With the sealed note in her hand, she hurried out to find Smith. She found him fast asleep on an old couch just inside the coach-house door, and remembering his tired look, softly said: "Poor man! How fatigued he must be! After all, what matters it for a few hours?" And then, instead of arousing him, she took his coat off the rack and gently covered him, murmuring in a broken voice that betrayed the pathos of her trouble: "Asleep, with the peace of God resting on his face. Heaven bless and reward your faithful heart. Sleep on." Returning to the house, she sat down at the table to think of a possible something she had done to cause John's unkind behavior. A shadow darkened the doorway. She turned mechanically. A tall, grave and elderly gentleman, with stooping shoulders and bared head, stood in the entrance. Constance arose. He approached her and said softly: "I beg to apologize for the intrusion. The door being open, and seeing you within, I entered unannounced." "Oh, Mr. Williams! Have you any tidings of Dorothy?" "I regret not being able to bring any tidings of your child. The river has been carefully dragged for a considerable distance in front of 'Rosemont.' I fear she is drowned and the body carried down to the Columbia." "My poor darling!" "There is yet hope, however, that your child lives. An old cripple--a disreputable looking vagabond--was seen lurking about the grounds the night she was lost. He has not been seen since. Detectives are baffled in tracing him. He may have abducted your child. It's the only hope that she is alive, though I admit, a frail one." "Heaven give me strength to hope it is so. But who could be so cruel as to steal away my little darling? No, no, she is drowned!" "I have to announce a disagreeable errand," and he paused, not quite satisfied of the propriety of the moment for so serious a declaration as he was about to make; but he at length continued hesitatingly: "As--as your--legal adviser--." Again he paused. Constance looked at him timidly. A cold, creepy fear of something dreadful about to happen chilled her. Her blanched face and beseeching eyes warned him of very grave consequences. "What is it, Judge?" she whispered with parched lips, "speak out; tell me what you have come for." "Are you strong enough?--I think--perhaps--I had better defer--" "Oh, yes, my strength is not great--but--the suspense--I cannot bear. Let me hear--what it is." He hesitated no longer. "As your attorney, I have been served with a notice of an application for a divorce, by John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance." With bowed head he laid the document on the table. She clasped her hand to her head, clutched the back of a chair for support, for the suddenness and weight of the blow staggered her. She, however, managed to bear herself bravely up. "And--could--he really believe this of me?" she said distractedly.