A great despair had fallen upon him. He had wakened up to the one grand passion of his life, and it was utterly hopeless. He loved Aline Rodney, but she hated him for the sorrow he had brought into her young life. She would marry Mr. Lane, perhaps, when she came home again, and Oran Delaney said to himself, with a pang of the bitterest despair, that he would rather be dead than live to see the fair young creature he loved the wife of another. Days went and came, and he lay there wearily and hopelessly, and the physician went and came daily, growing more and more puzzled over him. “He goes down hill every day, and yet, the case was very favorable at first,” he said to Mr. Rodney. “I am puzzled over him. I am afraid it is the mind wearing out the body. What do you think about it?” “I have the same opinion as you,” the lawyer answered. “It is not the wound I gave him, it is mental trouble that is killing him. It is the old fable of the sword wearing out the scabbard.” “Can nothing be done?” asked the old physician, who had become deeply interested in his new patient. “Nothing, I am quite sure,” Mr. Rodney answered, for he knew now all the pain and sorrow and remorse that were killing Oran Delaney. “Then he must die. All my medical skill can avail nothing to save him,” answered the physician, regretfully. In the meantime Mr. Rodney had followed out Mr. Delaney’s wishes. He had made public all that strange secret, whose keeping had cast that black shadow over Aline’s life. Chester was all agog with curiosity and excitement. It was a nine days’ wonder. As often happens in such cases, there was a complete revulsion of feeling. The great wave of public sentiment rolled toward Aline in a gush of pity and sympathy. The world was not as bad as Mr. Lane had believed it. No one was found to doubt the story Mr. Delaney had told on what all believed to be his death-bed. It was so strange and romantic, it appealed so powerfully to that love of the wonderful and mysterious inherent in all hearts, that every one believed it. If Aline had been at home society would have made her the heroine of the hour. It would have taken her to its heart of hearts, and worshiped her as blindly as it had wronged her. It would have made atonement for its hasty judgment, but pity and regret were now alike too late. Aline had vanished out of her old life as utterly as if she were dead and buried. The places that had known her knew her now no more. In her home they mourned her as one dead. In the stress of her trouble and anxiety, poor Mrs. Rodney had taken down to her sick-bed again. The pretty, self-possessed, dignified lady was completely broken down. She blamed herself as the author of all her beautiful daughter’s sorrow.