They looked at each other with ashen faces, these sorrowful men; they spoke in despairing voices; they were wounded to the heart by this awful tragedy. And the burden of their cry was that it would kill Dorian to learn the tragic fate of his bride. "He must not know," said Doctor Ray, the surgeon. "Through all the tumult of the storm he has slept peacefully under the influence of a sedative, and it is likely he will rest quietly until morning. When he asks for his bride he must be told that she is ill of sea-sickness, with her maid in close attendance. This excuse must serve until he is convalescent. Let no man forget, for whoever should tell him the truth would be guilty of murder." No one doubted it, and they acquiesced in his decision. So the long night passed, and the summer morning dawned with the balmy air and cloudless skies, but Dorian, when he waked, was feverish and out of his head. They did not have to make any excuses to him about the lost one. In his delirium he seemed to forget her existence. * * * * * In the week that followed upon her compact with Donald Kayne, Azalea Courtney had not been able to gain a single clue to the mystery of Nita's possession of the serpent ring. She had duly communicated to him the conversation she had overheard that night between the lovers, but neither one could make anything out of Nita's words, except the natural agitation of a young girl who knows certainly that her guardian will disapprove of her heart's choice. The week that followed, before Dorian went up to New York, was one of secret, silent, but exquisite torture to the baffled Azalea. Her plans and schemes for bringing about a misunderstanding between the lovers, and winning Dorian for herself, had failed utterly. Dorian was so nearly well that he would not permit himself to be treated as an invalid. He took his meals with them in the dining-room; he spent his evenings in the drawing-room, and, although he listened to Azalea's songs and politely turned the pages of her music, she knew that she bored him inexpressibly, and that he was always glad to escape to his betrothed at the window, where she always sat, after turning her beautiful, grave face from them all, to gaze at the sea, and listen to its solemn tone, that was so much sweeter to her ears than Azalea's voice. When Dorian turned from the piano, and went back to his love at the window, Azalea's heart would swell with jealous wrath until her voice would falter almost into silence, and the greatest aim of her life grew to be revenge upon Nita, who had won the prize she had worked for in vain.