He walks back, rambling down to the spot where Cecil came so near destruction. The land-slide is clearly visible, the young tree, torn up by the roots, is a ghost, with brown, withered leaves, and there are the jagged rocks going steeply down to the shore. If no hand had been there to save! If no steady foot had dared climb from point to point! He wonders now how she did it! It seems a greater miracle than before. And how strange that Cecil should evince such an unwonted partiality for Miss St. Vincent! Does it all point one way to a certain ending? It is well that Floyd Grandon has taken this path. He goes up through the garden and hears a voice at the hall door. "You cannot see him," Denise is saying. "He is scarcely conscious, and cannot be disturbed. Your call of yesterday made him much worse." "But I must see him, my good woman!" in an imperative tone. "If he is going to die, it is so much the more necessary." "It is Sunday," she replies. "You can talk no business, you can do him no good." "Who is here with him?" "No one," she answers, "but his daughter and myself. Go away and leave us to our quiet. If you must see him, come to-morrow." He takes out a pencil and writes a rather lengthy message. "Give this to him, and to no one else," he says, sharply, turning away with evident reluctance. "Oh!" Denise cries as she espies Mr. Grandon, "if I had known you were here; I was afraid he would force his way in." "I am glad you did not: I shall see that there is some one here all the time now." "He is much better. He has asked for you, and eaten a little." A white figure like a ghost stands beside them. Every bit of color has gone out of the blossom-tinted face, and the eyes look large and desperate in their frightened depths. "What is it?" she says. "Mr. Grandon, Denise, what is it the man said about papa? Is he--dying? Oh, it cannot be! Is this why you do not want me to see him?" They start like a couple of conspirators, speechless. "Oh!" with a wild, piercing cry. "Will he die? And I have just come home to stay, to comfort him, to make him happy. Oh, what shall I do? To be left all alone! Let me go to him." Denise catches her in the fond old arms, where she sobs as if her heart would break. Grandon turns away, then says brokenly, "I will go up to him. Some one must tell him. She ought to be with him." St. Vincent is awake and quite revived. Grandon touches carefully on this little scene, and proposes that Violet shall be allowed in the sick-room, since the sad secret has been betrayed. "Oh, how can I leave her?" he groans, in anguish, "alone, unprotected, to fight her way through strife and turmoil, to learn the world's coldness and cruelty! or perhaps be made a prey through her very innocence that has been so sedulously guarded. Heaven help us both!"