When Grus viewed himself in the mirror, as he at once did from long habit, his haggard face, drenched, mud-splashed form, awakened sincere self-commiseration; and his stained, bedraggled clothes troubled him more than his soiled character. He did not remember the time when he had not been well dressed, and to be so was his religion--the sacred instinct of his life. Therefore he was inexpressibly shocked, and almost ready to cry, as he saw his forlorn reflection in the glass. And he had no change with him. What should he do? All other phases of the disastrous night were lost in this. "There is nothing to be bought in this mean little town, and how can I go to the city in this plight?" he anxiously queried. "Go to the devil then," and the sympathetic Van Dam wrapped himself up and went to sleep. Gus worked fussily at his clothes till a late hour, devoutly hoping he should meet no one whom he knew before reaching his dressing-room in New York. CHAPTER XVI BLACK HANNIBAL'S WHITE HEART Edith half led, half carried her sobbing sister to the parlor. Mrs. Allen, no longer languid, and Laura from her exile, were already there, and with dismayed faces drew near the sofa where Zell had been placed. "What has happened?" asked Mrs. Allen tremblingly. Edith's self-control, now that her enemies were gone, gave way utterly, and sinking on the floor, she swayed back and forth, sobbing even more hysterically than Zell, and her mother and Laura, oppressed with the sense of some new impending disaster, caught the contagion of their bitter grief, and wept and wrung their hands also. The frightened maid stood in one door, with white questioning face, and old gray-haired Hannibal in another, with streaming eyes of honest sympathy. "Speak, speak, what is the matter?" almost shrieked Mrs. Allen. Edith could not speak, but Zell sobbed, "I--don't--know. Edith--seems to have--gone--mad." At last, after the application of restoratives, Edith so far recovered herself as to say brokenly: "We've been betrayed--they're--villains. They never--meant--marriage at all." "That's false!" screamed Zell. "I won't believe it of my lover, whatever may have been true of your mean little Gus Elliot. He promised to marry me, and you have spoiled everything by your mad folly. I'll never forgive you."--When Zell's wild fury would have ceased, cannot be said, but a new voice startled and awed them into silence. In the storm of sorrow and passion that raged within, the outer storm had risen unnoted, but now an awful peal of thunder broke over their heads and rolled away among the hills in deep reverberations. Another and a louder crash soon followed, and a solemn, expectant silence fell upon them akin to that when the noisy passionate world will suddenly cease its clamor as the trump of God proclaims the end. "Merciful heaven! we shall be struck," said Mrs. Allen shudderingly. "What's the use of living?" said Zell in a hard, reckless tone.