It was midnight; the fire had died down; a stick of drift-wood on the iron dogs, gnawed through by shimmering blue and copper flames, broke apart, and a shower of sparks flew up, caught in the soot, and smoldered in spreading rosettes on the chimney-back. The night, pressing black against the windows, was full of the murmurous silence of the rain and the soft advancing crash of the incoming tide; the man and woman were silent, too. Sometimes he would kiss the little scar on her wrist; sometimes press his lips into the soft cup of her palm; there seemed no need of words. It was in one of these silences that David suddenly raised his head and frowned. "Listen!" he said; then a moment later: "wheels! _here?_ at this time of night!" Elizabeth crouched back in her chair. "It is Blair. He has followed me--" "No, no; it is somebody who has lost his way in the rain. Yes, I hear him; he is coming in to ask the road." There were hurried steps on the porch, and Elizabeth grew so deadly white that David said again, reassuringly: "It's some passer-by. I'll send him about his business." Loud, vehement knocking interrupted him, and he said, cheerfully: "Confound them, making such a noise! Don't be frightened; it is only some farmer--" He took up a lamp and, closing the door of the living-room behind him, went out into the hall; some one, whoever it was, was fumbling with the knob of the front door as if in terrible haste. David slipped the bolt and would have opened the door, but it seemed to burst in, and against it, clinging to the knob, panting and terrified, stood his mother. "David! Is she--Am I too late? David! Where is Elizabeth? _Am I too late?_" CHAPTER XXXIII The rainy dawn which Elizabeth had seen glimmering in the steam and smoke of the railroad station filtered wanly through Mercer's yellow fog. In Mrs. Maitland's office-dining-room the gas, burning in an orange halo, threw a livid light on the haggard faces of four people who had not slept that night. When Blair had come frantically back from his fruitless quest at the hotel to say, "Is she here, _now?_" Mrs. Richie had sent him at once to Mr. Ferguson, who, roused from his bed, instantly took command. "Tell me just what has happened, please?" he said. Blair, almost in collapse, told the story of the afternoon. He held nothing back. In the terror that consumed him, he spared himself nothing; he had made Elizabeth angry; frightfully angry. But she didn't show it; she had even said she was not angry. But she said--and he repeated that sword-like sentence about "David's money and David's wife." Then, almost in a whisper, he added her question about--drowning. "She has--" he said; he did not finish the sentence. Robert Ferguson made no comment, but his face quivered. "Have you a carriage?" he asked, shrugging into his overcoat. Blair nodded, and they set out.