As Alec took the letter he saw that the address was in his partner’s writing. Anticipating nothing of greater moment than an ordinary business communication, he lingered to glance over the latest batch of telegrams, and proceeded leisurely to his own room before opening the envelope. But all his _sang-froid_ vanished the moment his eye lighted on the contents, and in its stead a deadly fear gripped him by the heart. There were two enclosures, one a brief hurried scrawl from Travis, the other a black-edged missive from his wife. Of what fatal news was this last the messenger? Could it be that his child was dead? or—or was it merely that Vanna had had news from home of the death of some one there? It was the former dire possibility that had smitten him with an unspeakable dread. He steadied himself sufficiently to read what his partner had to tell him before breaking the black-edged envelope. “Dear Alexander” (wrote Travis), “the enclosed was brought here by a boarding-house messenger a few minutes ago. As it may be of importance that it should reach you with the least possible delay, and as you have wired me not to expect you back before Tuesday, I mail it on at once. “Sincerely yours, “FRANK TRAVIS.” Then he tore open his wife’s letter. A single devouring glance at the first half dozen lines was enough. His child was dead! He could read no further then. The lines danced and quivered before his eyes. The letter fluttered from his fingers. For a moment or two every drop of blood seemed drawn from his heart. He caught at a chair and sank into it. He was as one smitten by a blow from an invisible hand. The love his wife had repudiated and would have none of, had been lavished by him, secretly and undemonstratively, on his child. His affection for it had been of that deep intense kind which neither seeks nor finds for itself an adequate outlet in words. And now he was bereft of the one object that had made life still sweet to him, and henceforward naught was left him save the dust and ashes of existence! Afternoon had darkened into evening, and night had come before he roused himself sufficiently to pick up his wife’s letter and read it through to the end. By that time a lighted lamp had been brought him. He now noticed for the first time that the letter bore a date a week old, but just then he could no more than vaguely wonder why and how it had been delayed. Giovanna had always been in the habit of beginning her epistles to her husband without troubling herself to employ any of those preliminary terms of affection or politeness which most writers make use of; and her present one was no exception to the rule.