Now she abruptly canceled this engagement, to the despair of her suitor, who adored her beauty as much as he did her millions. Her heart had never been in it. No man had touched that since she had been parted from her husband, but she had thought to fill up her empty life with gratified vanity, to wear the tiara of a duchess. Her heart revolted, and she realized that she would do her lover wrong to give him the hand without the heart. So, in spite of his entreaties, she took back her promise, and set society caviling as much as it had done at her divorce. She did not care. She was growing indifferent to everything now that she had found Darling and lost her again in death. So it happened that as time went by she lost heart and hope, sickening of a vague disease without a name, the slow loss of interest in life that had nothing left to make it dear. She lay ill on her bed at last, and the old family physician came and shook his head and said it must be nervous prostration. “It is a breaking heart,” she replied wearily. “No, no.” “I tell you yes,” she cried. “It was too cruel a blow, finding Darling and losing her again as I did. I have never recovered from it. The thorn has been in my heart always, and I can never recover.” “You should have married the duke. It would have diverted your mind to wear a coronet.” “It would only have wearied me,” she replied, and the look in her great, languid, dark eyes made his old heart ache. “You may spare your pills and potions, doctor. They cannot cure me, for I do not wish to get well. I am reaping the crop of pain I sowed in my passionate youth, and I am weary of life!” “You should have married another man and forgotten that episode,” he said; but she turned her face to the wall with a stifled moan: “I could not forget!” And he went away perplexed and unhappy, realizing that the medical art could not avail to cure that subtle malady--hopelessness and weariness of life. So it happened that she grew worse and worse, weaker and weaker. She swallowed the doctor’s tonics patiently; but they did not do her any good, and she smiled sorrowfully when he chided her because she would not make an effort to live. “The world is empty,” she murmured again, turning her lovely, pallid face to the wall. CHAPTER XXXV. “BILLING AND COOING WILL WAIT.” So it happened that on the day when the _Scythia_ came into port--the same day that Cora Ellyson went to Madame Barto’s at Carey Doyle’s command--Mrs. Dalrymple lay so ill that Cora felt it wrong to leave the house even for a moment. Yet she dared not disobey the commands of her merciless tyrant. On returning home she received a note from Frank Laurier announcing that he had arrived in New York that morning and would call on her that evening. The poor fellow having been parted from Jessie by her own decree of separation, had no resource now but to return to Cora, and most bitter indeed was the penalty.