"A very blissful dream, although, alas! too brief," Dorian answered, with a smile of languid rapture. "My wife was here, kissed me, and talked to me for a few happy moments before the maid dragged her away. To-morrow I must see her again. Oh, Van Hise, I am so happy that I have seen my darling again I do not think I shall sleep a wink to-night!" Van Hise sat down, trembling, his face dead white. "You must have been asleep," he said decidedly. "No, I have not slept to-night. Doc was down and gave me a sedative, but it seemed only a few minutes later that Nita came to me, and since Lizette took her away I've been lying here in a happy waking dream." The soldier repressed a groan, and thought: "He has dreamed the whole thing, or he has seen poor Nita's wraith. I should not like the seamen to know it, for only last night they were talking together, and I heard them say that to see a ghost on board ship was a sign of shipwreck. Decidedly they must not know of this, not even the good captain, or they might desert the yacht in a body!" He waited until Dorian seemed to fall into a light doze; then went and woke up the surgeon to tell him the strange happening. "Oh, pooh! it was no ghost--only a vision evoked by his morphine pill. He can be told to-morrow, if he persists in his fancy, that Nita's imprudence to-night has given her a relapse, and that will afford us a new excuse," replied the clever surgeon. CHAPTER XXI. DONALD KAYNE'S RETURN. Through Azalea Courtney's revelations the elopement of Dorian Mountcastle and Nita Farnham had become the sensation of the hour, and innumerable newspaper paragraphs had chronicled the facts of the duel, the death of Donald Kayne, the elopement of the young lovers on the yacht. And then Irwin returned with the story of the tragedy of Nita's loss at sea with her maid Lizette. It was a tragedy so full of woe that it thrilled every heart that read it with sympathy and sorrow. Even the Courtneys, who hated the girl, grew pale as they realized how soon Nita's happiness had come to an end, and that Dorian was so terribly bereft of his love. But into the ward of Bellevue, where Miser Farnham lay barely alive, so terribly had he been hurt in the railway accident, and so slight were his chances for life, penetrated no tidings from the outer world. None there knew anything of the beautiful ward who had eloped with her lover the very night of the accident. Charles Farnham was supposed to be friendless and poor, save for some miserly savings of whose hiding-place none had any knowledge. No one took any interest in his fate except the doctors and nurses at Bellevue, and they all believed that it was impossible that he should recover from his internal injuries. He was alive and little more. He had never uttered a conscious word since the accident.