Nita had fallen unconscious at his feet. "It is only a faint," he replied. And between them she was soon restored to consciousness, although still dazed and white and trembling from the shock she had received. Miser Farnham dead! She could scarcely realize it, and she tried hard to keep from feeling glad and happy over the startling news. It seemed cruel and wicked to rejoice over any one's death. Captain Van Hise returned to the charge as soon as he thought she could bear it. "Of course, if Dorian could have foreseen this he would not have planned to carry you off," he said. "But as things have fallen out, don't you think you had better forgive him and marry him to-night?" "You are perfectly certain that Mr. Farnham is dead?" she asked him, with such shuddering anxiety that he knew how all depended on his answer, and hastened to reply: "Perfectly certain. We had it from the best authority." This was a white lie, but he considered it admissible in his friend's behalf. He had only heard the current rumor, but he did not suppose that the old man's death had any special bearing on Nita's marriage to Dorian, except that it seemed to him a very desirable thing that the objectionable guardian had been removed so opportunely from this mundane sphere. "Not a very desirable connection for a lady in the position that Mrs. Dorian Mountcastle will occupy, for everybody in New York had heard of Miser Farnham, and his record was not a straight one," he mused, and thought he saw relenting in Nita's eyes. "Oh, come with me to Dorian," he urged. "The surgeon has agreed to a brief interview, only you must be very calm and not excite him." Lizette who, for a maid, was a very superior sort of person, beamed cordial approval. "Miss Nita, I think the easiest way is to consent!" she cried. "If you refuse it may make him worse, and since you intend to marry him some time, anyway, what's the odds?" "Yes, what's the odds?" echoed Van Hise cheerfully, and led her to Dorian. She wondered in a dazed way if she ought to tell her lover the truth--tell him she had been married to the repulsive old miser, but her whole soul rose in rebellion against the humiliating confession. She remembered how he had scorned Azalea because she would have married him for his money. No--no, he would despise her if he knew--he who had never known poverty and hunger and bitter need--that she had sold herself to the horrible old miser for a chest of gold. When she saw Dorian lying in the berth so wan and pale, wounded in a chivalrous defense of her, she forgot everything else but that she loved him wildly--madly! Loved him with a love that was her doom. Quite overcome, she sank upon her knees by Dorian's berth. "Oh, my love, my love," she whispered, with her lips against his brow. And then Dorian knew that the victory was won. If she had wavered for one moment his pale, handsome, suffering face had turned the scale in his favor. And her dark eyes answered without words.