As for the Courtneys, they were still at Gray Gables, carrying out their policy of masterly inaction. The flight of Nita and the condition of the miser made no difference to them. A lawyer, acting under instructions received from Farnham previous to the accident, was entrusted with the conduct of expenses incident to the housekeeping at Gray Gables. Everything went on like clock-work, except that the good housekeeper, Mrs. Hill, who had grown to love her young mistress so dearly, carried always a sad face and aching heart for poor Nita's tragic fate. Weeks flew past, and it would have been very lonely at Gray Gables but that the Courtneys invited some city friends for a few weeks, and got through the July days with some bathing, dressing, boating, and dancing, not keeping up any pretense of mourning over Nita's supposed death. Meg Dineheart, the old fortune-teller, still prowled about the beach like a bird of evil omen, and had twice been driven ignominiously out of Gray Gables with threats of arrest if she ever showed her face there again. To tell the truth, Meg was slyly seeking for Nita's chest of gold that Lizette had carefully hidden in the closet of her mistress, but she found such lynx eyes watching her whenever she ventured into the old stone mansion that she almost despaired of success. During the summer, Meg had made two trips to New York to see Miser Farnham at the hospital, but she got no good out of these visits. He still lingered in that strange, comatose condition, taking no notice of anything, and yet improving slowly but appreciably, so the nurses said, until they began to believe that he would really get well again. "The old wretch! I wish he would die, then maybe Jack and me would get the handling of all that money if only we knew where it was hid," muttered Meg angrily, and she was in no wise pleased to learn that he was likely to recover. She was very anxious for her son Jack to return from his last trip to sea, for he had been away several months, and she was eager to know what he would say to the happenings at Pirate Beach since he went away, the return and death of Nita, whom he had wished to marry, and the accident to the miser, whose gold both mother and son greedily coveted. New York had another sensation the middle of August when Donald Kayne, the millionaire, who was believed to have been killed in the duel with Dorian Mountcastle returned, alive and well, to the city in his own yacht. "It was all a mistake, the report of my death. My antagonist was much more seriously wounded than myself, and I have heard had a hard tussle for life," he told his friends carelessly. Yet a strange change had come over Donald Kayne. Always nervous and restless, his friends observed that he was now more so than ever before. He veered from place to place. He could hardly be seen at his club any more. And no one had any news of Dorian Mountcastle's whereabouts until received through him.