“I tell you it is there,” he would say, when Kenneth tried to disabuse his mind of the idea. “Pondy is holding it, and by and by he’ll pull the trigger, and presto, we two will be enjoying ourshelves immenshely.” His laugh was terrible, and Kitty would stop her ears to shut out the sound. “Somebody has tried to kill him,” she said to Kenneth, whose conscience smote him a little, but who made no reply. Now that Connie was his and Hal so low, he felt only pity for him and ministered to him with all a brother’s care, but with no good result. As the summer days grew hotter the fever ran higher and higher, until at last neither Dr. Catherin nor Kenneth gave any hope to Kitty, whose thoughts turned to Connie as a friend she would like to have with her. “Do you think she would come?” she said to Kenneth, who answered: “I don’t really know. I’ll telegraph to her for you.” That afternoon he sent a telegram to Connie, saying: “Hal is dying. Kitty wants you. Come if you can. KENNETH.” He was right in his conjecture that a message from him would be more effectual than one from Kitty. It found her in her aunt’s house, tired of everything, and with a dread that the count, while treating her as if he were her father, and professing the utmost affection for his wife, might again say words to her to which she could not listen. If Hal were dying, and Kitty wanted her, duty and inclination bade her go, and the morning after she received the telegram she was on her way to Millville. She was not expected on that train, and as there was no one to meet her, Jehu and Henriet took her up the hill to the villa, on the doors of which knots of crape were tied. “He’s dead!” she exclaimed, while Jehu rejoined: “My land! so he is. I knew he was crazy as a bear.” Kenneth saw her alight, and went to meet her, taking her at once to Kitty, who for hours had sat still and dry eyed, with a look on her face Kenneth did not like. The moment she saw Connie and heard her sympathetic “Poor little Kitty,” she threw herself into her arms with a storm of sobs and tears, which cooled her blood and softened the hard lines about her mouth. A little later and the two stood together by the dead, Kitty lamenting that Connie could not have seen him in his manly beauty, and not as he was now, thin and worn, but with a look of peace on his face. Connie’s conscience pricked her a good deal for the deception she was practicing, and but for Kenneth she might have told Kitty a part of the story. “Better not,” he said. “The secret in all its details is known only to you and me; let us keep it sacred. You could never tell all, and even a part would distress her.” Connie kept her secret and soothed and comforted the stricken Kitty, and cared for the baby, which came to her as readily as to its mother or Cindy.