She turned and went away. He followed to the head of the stairs and waited until he heard her step in the hall below. "Good-night," he had said, gravely. And from the shadowy depths below came back a faint, mournful echo of the word. When Edward returned to the room he sat by the window and buried his face upon his arm. Hour after hour passed; the outer world slept. Had he been of the south, reared there and a sharer in its traditions, the secret would have died with him that night and its passing would have been signaled by a single pistol shot. But he was not of the south, in experience, association or education. It was in the hush of midnight that he rose from his seat, took the picture and descended the steps. The wing-room was never locked; he entered. Through the drawn curtains of the glass-room he saw the form of Gerald lying in the moonlight upon his narrow bed. Placing the picture beside the still, white face of the sleeper, he was shocked by the likeness. One glance was enough. He went back to his window again. One, two, three, four o'clock from the distant church steeple. How the solemn numbers have tolled above the sorrow-folds of the human heart and echoed in the dewless valleys of the mind, the depths to which we sink when hope is gone! But with the dawn what shadows flee! So came the dawn at last; the pale, tremulous glimmer on the eastern hills, the white light, the rosy flush and then in the splendor of fading mists the giant sun rolled up the sky. A man stood pale and weary before the open window at Ilexhurst. "The odds are against me," he said, grimly, "but I feel a power within me stronger than evidence. I will match it against the word of this woman, though every circumstance strengthened that word. The voice of the Caucasian, not the voice of Ethiopia, speaks within me! The woman does not believe herself; the mother's instinct has been baffled, but not destroyed!" And yet again, the patrician bearing, the aristocrat! Such was Gerald. "We shall see," he said, between his teeth. "Wait until Virdow comes!" Nevertheless, when, not having slept, he arose late in the day, he was almost overwhelmed with the memory of the revelation made to him, and the effect it must have upon his future. At that moment there came into his mind the face of Mary. CHAPTER XI. IN THE CRIMSON OF SUNSET.