"At his home. It's fortunate he hadn't started south." "Or," George said, "he should have started sooner." "I've an uncomfortable feeling," Lambert mused, "that he was planning to run away from this very chance. Put it off a little too long. Seems he went to bed four days ago. I didn't know until to-day because you see he's been a little outcast since that scene in the club. He sent for me this afternoon, and, curiously enough, asked for you. Will you go up? I really think you'd better." But George shrank from the thought. "I don't want to be scolded by a man who is possibly dying." "Let's hope not," Lambert said. "You'll go. Around five o'clock." George hesitated. "Did he ask for Sylvia?" "He didn't ask me, but I telephoned her." "Why?" George asked, sharply. "Every card on the table now, George!" Lambert warned. "We have to think of the future, in case----" "Of course, you're right," George answered. "I'm sorry, and I'll go." When he entered the Dalrymple house at five o'clock he came face to face with Sylvia in the hall. He had never seen her so controlled, and her quiet tensity frightened him. "Lambert told me," she whispered, "you were coming now. Dolly hasn't asked for me, but I'd feel so much better--if things should turn out badly, for I'm thinking with all my heart of the boy I used to be so fond of, and it's, perhaps, my fault----" "It is not your fault," George cried. "He's always asked for it. Lambert will tell you that." George relaxed. Dalrymple's mother came down the stairs with the doctor, and George experienced a quick sympathy for the retiring, elderly woman he had scarcely seen before. She gave Sylvia her hand, while George stepped out with the physician. In reply to George's questions the quiet man shook his head and frowned. "If it were any one else of the same age--I've attended in this house many years, Mr. Morton, and I've watched him since he was a child. I've marvelled how he's got so far." He added brutally: "Scarcely a chance with the turn its taking." "If there's anything," George muttered, "any great specialist anywhere----Understand money doesn't figure----" "Everything possible is being done, Mr. Morton. I'm truly sorry, but I can tell you it's quite his own fault." So even this cold-blooded practitioner had heard the talk, and sympathized, and not with Dalrymple. A trifle dazed George reentered the house. "It's good of you to come, Mr. Morton," Mrs. Dalrymple said. "Shall we go upstairs now?" There was no bitterness in her voice, and she had taken Sylvia's hand, yet undoubtedly she knew everything. Abruptly George felt sorrier for Dalrymple than he had ever done. "Please wait, Sylvia," she said. He followed Mrs. Dalrymple upstairs and into the sick-room. "It's Mr. Morton, dear." She beckoned to the nurse, and George remained in the room alone with the feverish man in the bed. He walked over and took the hot hand.