When the physicians arrived, he was lying on his office lounge under the age-yellowed engraving of President Jefferson Davis and the grouped cabinet of the erstwhile Confederate States of America, and it was there that he died within the half hour. "Acute indigestion," said the doctors, "His blood pressure was high and he refused to ease up on the work. He had often been warned that this might occur." His will showed that in one respect at least he had heeded the warning, for its date was recent. The estate, much shrunken below the estimate of public supposition, was devised entirely to his son except for a bequest of a few thousand dollars to Anne's mother. There was mention, too, of a note, as yet unpaid, for twenty thousand dollars "loaned and hereby released, to my friend Lawrence Masters, Esq." "In leaving my whole estate to my beloved son Morgan," read an explanatory clause of the document, "I do so happy in the knowledge that I likewise provide for my niece, Anne Masters, to whom he is engaged to be married, and for whom my love and affection is that of a father." And Boone Wellver, who had still hoped against hope to receive from Anne the word that would restore to him at least a fighting chance, heard nothing. It all seemed to his gloomy analysis relentlessly logical that the girl, who for a long while had fought for her choice of an alien in her own world, should go back to her kind. After all she was not for him, and his dream had only been a fantasy long indulged but no longer possible of indulgence. So Boone plodded on, and in the more obvious manifestations of life was not greatly changed. The zest of the game was gone, but its realities remained to be met, and for him there was a coward memory to be lived down--the memory of a relapse from which a woman had saved him. The ordeal of waiting was almost over for Anne, and the wedding preparations were under way. From the bed which she had not been able to leave since the day of Colonel Wallifarro's burial, Mrs. Masters injected a more fervent enthusiasm into these preliminaries than did the bride to be. After the fashion of one who has been embittered and enjoys a belated triumph, the mother lived in a sort of fantasy which could see no clouds in the sky of her daughter's future. A factitious gaiety animated her, even though the death of her mainstay had crushed her into invalidism. The haunted misery in Anne's face, and the lids that closed as if against a painful glare when Mrs. Masters forecast the happiness to be, were things that had no recognition or acknowledgment from the lady in the sick bed. It was as if her own joy in a dream achieved were comprehensive enough to embrace and assure the life-long happiness of her daughter, as the whole includes the part. But when Anne sat down at her desk one afternoon to address some of the wedding invitations, she was out of sight of the maternal eye and her sensitive lips dropped piteously.