The east room was empty, save for servants who were gathering some of the cut flowers for themselves. He stood aimlessly for a few moments looking about him. A white carnation lay at the foot of the dais, fallen from Jessica's shower-bouquet. He picked this up, abstractedly smelled its perfume, and drew the stem through his buttonhole. Then, passing into the next room, he found his robes leisurely and laid them by--he had now only to embellish the sham with his best wishes! All at once he heard voices in the library. He opened the door and entered. Harry Sanderson stopped stock-still. In the room sat old David Stires in his wheel-chair opposite his son. He was deadly pale, and his fierce eyes blazed like fire in tinder. And what a Hugh! Not the indolently gay prodigal Harry had known in the past, nor the flushed bridegroom of a half-hour ago! It was a cringing, a hang-dog Hugh now; with a slinking dread in the face--a trembling of the hands--a tense expectation in the posture. The thin line across his brow was a livid pallor. His eyes lifted to Harry's for an instant, then returned in a kind of fascination to a slip of paper on the desk, on which his father's forefinger rested, like a nail transfixing an animate infamy. "Sanderson," said the old man in a low, hoarse, unnatural voice, "come in and shut the door. God forgive us--we have married Jessica to a common thief! Hugh--my son, my only child, whom I have forgiven beyond all reckoning--has forged my name to a draft for five thousand dollars!" CHAPTER VII OUT OF THE DARK For a moment there was dead silence in the room. In the hall the tall clock struck ponderously, and a porch blind slammed beneath a caretaker's hand. Harry's breath caught in his throat, and the old man's eye again impaled his hapless son. Hugh threw up his head with an attempt at jauntiness, but with furtive apprehension in every muscle--for he could not solve the look he saw on his father's face--and said: "You act as if it were a cool million! I'm no worse than a lot who have better luck than I. Suppose I did draw the five thousand?--you were going to give me ten for a wedding present. I had to have the money then, and you wouldn't have given it to me. You know that as well as I do. Besides, I was going to take it up myself and you would never have been the wiser. He promised to hold it--it's a low trick for him to round on me like this. I'll pay him off for it sometime! I don't see that it's anybody else's business but ours, anyway," he continued, with a surly glance at Harry. Harry had been staring at him, but with a vision turned curiously backward--a vision that seemed to see Hugh standing at a carpeted dais in a flower-hung room, while his own voice said out of a lurid shadow: "_Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband...._" "Stay, Sanderson," said the old man; then turning to Hugh: "Who advanced you money on this and promised to 'hold it'?" "Doctor Moreau." "He profited by it?"