“Do you know that in little more than an hour I am to leave here for the White Sulphur Springs? Miss Ives has already gone around to her friends who will accompany us. My husband will come home presently to drive with me to the depot.” “And in the meantime your poor, dying sister is calling for you in vain. Pansy Laurens, you are utterly heartless!” exclaimed Mr. Finley, with a fine show of indignation. She trembled perceptibly, and grew pale as a snowdrop under the glare of the gaslight. “May her uneasy spirit haunt you, and drive repose from your breast!” he cried tragically. Whirling toward him with a disdainful gesture of her white hand, she exclaimed: “What if I went with you, simply to humor the fancy of this poor, dying girl--mind, I own to no relationship with her--what would be the price of your silence?” Without moving a muscle, he answered coolly: “A thousand dollars!” “You are certainly rapacious! I could not give you such a sum to-night.” “I should not expect it. I would give you a week to raise it, if you would leave with me some of your diamonds as a guarantee of good faith,” he replied, with an air of business that amused while it disgusted her. “Unfortunately, my jewels are packed and my trunks are gone. You will have to depend upon my simple word of honor, or go back as you came,” she replied coldly. He studied her face a moment, then said sullenly: “I will take your word of honor, then. You have too much at stake to risk disappointing me. So that is settled. Of course, if you did not pay me in a week I should follow you to the White Sulphur Springs. Will you come with me now?” “Go out and hail some passing cab, and keep it waiting at the corner around the next square. I will join you there in a few minutes, for I have no time to lose. I must return here in time to join my husband,” Pansy answered, dismissing him with a wave of her hand, and then hastening upstairs to don a concealing bonnet and veil, and to leave some plausible excuse with Phebe for Colonel Falconer, who might return at any moment. She left the house regretfully, with unsteady steps and a foreboding heart, fearing that she was doing wrong, but drawn by a passionate yearning to the deathbed of her beloved sister. “How could I refuse her dying prayer, even though its granting be attended with so much risk and cost to myself?” she thought, with generous pity and self-sacrificing love. “Remember,” she said to Finley, as they were whirled swiftly up the steep grade of Broad Street toward his home on Church Hill, “I must see Alice Laurens alone. You will go in first, and see that every one else leaves the room.” “I will do so,” he promised, and no more was said between them. At the corner below his residence the hack was stopped. He got out, and directed her to wait until he returned for her. When he reëntered the house he found that a great change had taken place in the invalid.