It was _fear_, Sophie thought, and she tried to reassure the young girl who needed no reassurance, and who went swiftly to the room where her lover lay. He knew she was with him, and clasped her hands in his, and tried to tell his father something,—but the words were never spoken, and before the sun went down he was dead; and Georgie lay upon her face in her own solitary room trying to fight back the horrid fear which amounted almost to a certainty, and which within three days drove her to the store where Henry Morton was a clerk. He saw her as she meant he should, and the sweetness of her smile, and the great change in her manner toward him, drew him again to her side, and revived all his love for her. There was a chance meeting next day in the street, a long walk in the evening, followed by another and another, and ere Richard Le Roy had been in his grave a month, Henry Morton and Louise Heyford were man and wife. Contrary to the usual course of things, she had been the one to urge an immediate union. There was no necessity for delay; they could earn their living better together, and she did so want a home of her own, if only one room. He should see what a nice housekeeper she could be, she said, when he proposed waiting a few months until he had more laid up. So they were married, and they rented two rooms, and fitted them up as prettily and cosily as his limited means would allow, and there he brought his handsome bride in November, and there, early in the following May the little Annie was born. She was a full-grown, healthy child, with no resemblance to the father, who, troubled and mystified, looked at her curiously, and then at his young wife, and then went away alone, and thought it all out, while as he thought there came over him a change which awoke all the evil passions of his nature, and transformed him into a demon of rage and jealousy. There was a stormy interview between him and his wife, a full confession from her, and then he cast her from him and drove her into the street, where, with her baby in her arms, she wandered half the night until it was no longer safe for a respectable woman to be abroad. Faint, and tired, and sick, she stepped from the car, and turned toward the home in Varick street. “I’ll try it,” she said. “I’ll tell them the whole truth, and if they too turn me off, I’ll go to-morrow to Greenwood and die on Richard’s grave.” As yet, neither her step-mother nor Jack knew of her disgrace, for the former had been sick, and Jack had not been to see her since Annie’s birth two weeks before. Jack slept soundly that night, and dreamed that some one called his name. Waking at last, he listened, and heard Georgie’s voice, calling him to come, and telling him she was dying. That was no dream, and in a moment he was dressed and at the door, where he met his sister with her baby in her arms, and her face so white and ghastly that he uttered a cry of alarm, which brought his mother to his side.