Only a few even of the inmates—of whom Dosia was one—knew that Lawson was in an upper room, with his head bandaged, sobered and sullen, watching through the wide windows the gray clouds shifting overhead, as he waited the completion of the arrangements that were to take him at nightfall a couple of thousand miles away. Leverich had put his foot down this time; Lawson was to go. He was bringing his vices too near home, concealment was no longer possible. All his unsavory hidden past rose to make a fetid exhalation about his name that also affected Dosia’s. “It’s no use,” Leverich had said to his wife, in a stormy interview that morning, “I won’t have the fellow here another day. I’ll ship him off to Nevada, and not another penny will I give him while he lives. He can sink or swim, for all me; and he _will_ sink—down to hell.” “Oh, don’t say that you won’t send the poor boy any money,” pleaded his wife. “Not a red. I’ve had enough of him, Myra. _You_ know! As long as he could appear half-way decent, I was willing to carry my end, but he’s going to the dogs now too fast for me. I’ve done with him; he goes to-night, whether he’s able to or not.” Dosia was not to leave the house until the next day. Mrs. Leverich, impelled by what sometimes seems to be the very demon of hospitality, still pressed her to stay longer, while knowing that her absence would be a relief. “It is too bad that you want to go like this,” she had said crossly, sitting in gorgeous negligée by the side of Dosia’s bed, her handsome, richly colored face showing mean lines in it. “I looked upon you quite as a daughter; I thought we would have such nice times together. Why on earth couldn’t you let Lawson alone, as I told you to? Then none of this would have happened.” Her tone was complaining, as of one compelled to suffer unnecessarily; there was such a total absence of warmth as to prove that shown before as but a tinsel glow. Mrs. Leverich hated unpleasant things, discomfort of any kind gave her an injured feeling; if there had been a glamour around Dosia the glamour had departed. What little depth the nature of Myra Leverich contained was all in the tie of blood, which made her resent any imputation on Lawson. “I suppose you’d like to rest up-stairs to-day, and have your meals in your room,” she went on in a businesslike way. “I’ll send Martha up to pack your trunk for you—that is, if you insist on going—if she’s not too busy. The servants have so much to do to-day.” “Oh, I can pack it myself,” said Dosia. What did one stab the more matter now? She took Mrs. Leverich’s hand impulsively. “You’ve been so good, so kind to me—you’ve given me so many pretty things,”—her voice sank to a whisper,—“it doesn’t seem to me that I ought to keep them now. I want to give them back to you.”