“Tell your sister that only her death or mine can sever the tie between us. She was to have been my wife to-night, and as such I look upon her, no matter how maimed and stricken she may be. Tell her I am waiting to see her, to help you take care of her, that I think I have a right superior to yours. Ask if I may come.” This was his answer, which Jack carried to Georgie, who, with a frantic effort, tried to raise her helpless hand to clasp within the other, while her lips quivered and the tears rolled in torrents down her cheeks. “Don’t—de-serve—it,” she managed to articulate, and Jack, who knew her so well, felt that she spoke truly, but pitied her just the same, and tried to quiet and comfort her, and asked her if she would see Roy then. She shook her head; but when Jack said, “Is it a comfort to you to know that he is here?” she nodded twice; and so, though he could not see her, Roy staid all night at Oakwood, and for hours walked slowly up and down the piazza, always in the same attitude, with head bent forward and his hands locked behind him. They had told him that Georgie was quieter when she heard his step, and that when it ceased she seemed to listen for it; and so, unmindful of his own fatigue, he kept up the same weary round, until the moon, which should have lighted him to the altar, was past the zenith, and down toward the west. Then Jack came out and told him Georgie was asleep. So he paused in his walking, and sinking into a chair began to feel how worn and tired he was. Edna had come over late in the afternoon, and with Maude and Jack was watching by Georgie’s bedside. She had not seen Roy since the morning when she had broken the tidings to him; but when Jack came in and told how exhausted he was, she poured a glass of wine from a decanter on the sideboard, and placing it with some crackers on a little silver tray, carried it out to him. “You are tired, Mr. Leighton,” she said, “and I have brought you this; try and take some of it.” He had not heard her step, but at the sound of her voice he started, and the weary look upon his face disappeared at once. He drank the wine and took one of the crackers, and thanked her for her thoughtfulness, and asked if she too were not very tired. “Sit down and rest,” he said, offering her his chair, and bringing another for himself. “Jack told me she was sleeping. You are not needed there now. Stay with me awhile.”