The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation. Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He would absorb her, envelop her, inwrap her in the might of his passion. He had wronged her bitterly, but with what limitless tenderness, what depths of devotion, would he make up for it! He was troubled by no doubts as to her feeling for him. The memory of the light in her eyes as they met his, of the flush on the cheek, were enough. Viola was his when he chose to claim her. Still, the deliberative habits of his curiously sensitive and conventional nature were stronger than the force of his last and deepest attachment. Three days followed his interview with Viola, and he had not yet gone to see her. He could not bring himself to intrude upon her. Her girl's passion of shame and grief seemed a sanctuary into which no man's coarse eye should look. He thought of her with a deep, almost reverential tenderness, but he did not feel as if he ought to see her till the first anguish of her discovery had spent itself. Then--then--he would take her in his arms, and there would be nothing to say, only to ask her to forgive him, to hear her say it, and then happiness--happiness--happiness--on to the end of time. On the fourth day he decided to send her some flowers. But after he had bought them it seemed to him so meaningless, so banal, to send such a formal offering, one that he had sent so often to women for whom his sentiments were so widely different, that he suddenly changed his mind, and ordered the flowers to be sent to his sister-in-law, who was just then in town. When he walked away from the florist's he looked rather ashamed of himself and of his burst of sentiment. But what did he want to send her flowers for? He wanted to see her, to take her hands in his and look down deep into those beautiful gray eyes and say--perhaps not say anything. She and he understood. He made up his mind that he would go on the morrow, and on this decision he went to sleep with a light heart. In the morning he was awakened by a messenger to say that his brother Mortimer had returned from the country seriously ill. He was at the house on Pacific Avenue inside an hour. Mortimer had come home a week before with a bad cold which had developed into a dangerous case of pneumonia. Maud Gault was helpless and distracted. Her brother-in-law spent the day in attending to the numerous duties which crop up with sickness, and in the evening telegraphed for Letitia.