Acts fourth and fifth. Two years later Lilian is at the home of her father in New York. Her husband has disappeared. His name was on the passenger list of a wrecked steamer; and no other word of him or of the child has been heard. If he had left the little girl in the care of others, it is unknown to whom or where. So Lilian is a widow and childless. She is fading, day by day, and is hardly expected to live. Her mind, tortured by the suspense, which, worse than certainty, is gradually yielding to hallucinations which keep her little one ever present to her fancy. Harold Routledge was wounded seriously in the duel, but not killed; he is near Lilian; seeing her every day; but he is her friend, rather than her lover, now; she talks with him of her child, and he feels how utterly hopeless his own passion is in the presence of an all-absorbing mother's love. It is discovered that the child is living peacefully among kind guardians in a French convent; and Routledge determines to cross the ocean with the necessary evidence and bring the little one back to its mother. He breaks the news to Lilian tenderly and gently. A gleam of joy illuminates her face for the first time since the terrible night, two years before, and Routledge feels that the only barrier to his own happiness has been removed. But the sudden return and reappearance of the husband falls like a stroke of fate upon both. As the curtain descends on the fourth act, Lilian lies fainting on the floor, with Natalie at her side, while the two men stand face to face above the unconscious woman whom they both love. Three lives ruined--because Lilian's father, having lost his wealth, in his old age, dared not, as he himself expressed it, leave a tenderly nurtured daughter to a merciless world. The world is merciless, perhaps, but it is not so utterly and hopelessly merciless to any man or woman as one's heart may be. Lilian comes back to consciousness on her deathbed. Her child had returned to her only as a messenger from heaven, summoning her home. But the message had been whispered in unconscious ears; for she had not seen the little girl, who was removed before the mother had recovered from her swoon. They dare not tell her now that Natalie is on this side of the ocean and asleep in the next room. Mr. Strebelow had heard in a distant land, travelling to distract his mind from the great sorrow of his own life, of Lilian's condition, and he hastened back to undo the wrong he felt that he had committed. She asks to see him; she kisses his hand with tenderness and gratitude, when he tells her that Natalie shall be her own hereafter; his manly tears are tears of repentance, mingled with a now generous love. The stroke of death comes suddenly; they have only a moment's time to arouse the little one from its sleep; but they are not too late, and Lilian dies at last, a smile of perfect happiness on her face, with her child in her arms.