One week after the recital at the Opera-House she had grown so much worse that Mariposa had called in the doctor they had had in attendance, off and on, since their arrival. He was grave and there was a consultation. When she saw their faces the cold dread that had been slowly growing in the girl’s heart seemed suddenly to expand and chill her whole being. Mrs. Moreau was undoubtedly very ill, though there was still hope. Yet their looks were sober and pitying as they listened to the daughter’s reiterated asseverations that her mother had often been worse and made a successful rally. An atmosphere of illness settled down like a fog on the little cottage. A nurse appeared; the doctors seemed to be in the house many times a day. Mrs. Willers, as soon as she heard, came up, no longer over-dressed and foolish, but grave and helpful. After a half-hour spent at Lucy’s bedside, wherein the sick woman had spoken little, and then only about her daughter, Mrs. Willers had gone to the office of _The Trumpet_, frowning in her sympathetic pain. It was Saturday, and Shackleton had already left for Menlo Park when she reached the office. But she determined to see him early on Monday and tell him of the straits of his old friend’s widow and child. Mrs. Willers knew the signs of the scarcity of money, and knew also the overwhelming expenses of sickness. What she did not know was that on Friday morning Mariposa had wept over her check-book, and then gone out and sold the diamond brooch. The long Sunday--the interminable day of strained anxiety--passed, shrouded in rain. When her mother fell into the light sleep that now marked her condition, Mariposa mechanically went to the window of the bedroom and looked out. It was one of those blinding rains that usher in the San Francisco winter, the water falling in straight lances that show against the light like thin tubes of glass, and strike the pavement with a vicious impact, which splinters them into spray. It drummed on the tin roof above the bedroom with an incessant hollow sound, and ran in a torn ribbon of water from the gutter on the eaves. The prospect that the window commanded seemed in dreariness to match the girl’s thoughts. That part of Pine Street was still in the unfinished condition described by the words “far out.” Vacant lots yawned between the houses; the badly paved roadbed was an expanse of deeply rutted mud, with yellow ponds of rain at the sewer mouths. The broken wooden sidewalk gleamed with moisture and was evenly striped with lines of vivid green where the grass sprouted between the boards. Now and then a wayfarer hurried by, crouched under the dome of an umbrella spouting water from every rib.