Then they passed into the drawing-room. The afternoon light streamed through the bare emptiness of this once stately apartment, revealing the long crack that zigzagged across the mirror, and the rents in the colonel's arm-chair. In the rear half of the room there were only one or two pieces of furniture, evidently seldom used, and pushed back into the corners. The double doors leading from here were open, and vouchsafed the visitor a view of one of those long and spacious dining-rooms, with an outer wall of glass, often seen in old San Francisco houses. Fronting this glass wall were tiers of plants, some mounted on rough boxes, some on tables. They were of many sizes and sorts, but the feathery foliage of the maidenhair was most in evidence. It seemed to be growing in every kind of receptacle, from the ordinary flower-pot to a tomato-can on one side and a huge kerosene-oil tin on the other. Near the dining-table was a chair, and the table itself was littered with brown paper, cut neatly into circular pieces about three inches in diameter. Viola moved forward to close the doors, but was arrested by her visitor. "Why, you've a regular conservatory in there. What beautiful plants!" She held the door open and let him look in, though apparently not quite at her ease. "Yes," she said; "I have great luck with ferns. Some people have, you know. It's just because we take more care of them than others." "My sister-in-law would die of envy if she could see those," said Gault, indicating the maidenhairs; "she's always buying that sort of thing, and they're always dying." Viola looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. The color deepened in her cheeks, and then she looked away and began to play with the lock of the door. "She must buy a great many," she said, with a questioning inflection. "Cart-loads," said he, absently, wondering what had caused her augmented color, and watching her as he would always now watch her whenever there was the slightest deviation from her normal manner. "And I suppose," she said, "she spends a great deal on them?" "I suppose so," he answered, "judging by the number that I've seen wither in their prime and disappear, and new ones take their places the next day." Viola pressed the lock in and shot it out. "Are any of them dead just now?" she asked, in rather a small voice. "Dozens, probably. It seems to me some of them are always dead, only they're considerate enough not to all die at the same time." There was a moment's pause. Gault's gaze was diverted from her face to the high, old-fashioned room, with its marble mantel carved in fruits and flowers and its bare sideboard. Then Viola said: "Your sister-in-law always gets her plants from the large florists, doesn't she? Some one on Kearney or Sutter Street?" "I dare say she does; but I'm sure I don't know. I can't control my curiosity any further--what were you going to do with those round bits of paper you were cutting when I came in?"