Norah had gone back to her suffering mistress the night before, and a vague report that had reached Winans to-day relative to Grace's illness weighed heavily on him, as, with clasped hands and a beating heart, he walked up and down, restlessly, striving with his agony. Remorse was busy with his soul. In this great shock that had come upon him and his wife he lost sight of his own personal grievance, and thought only of her, forgetting his hot rage of two nights before, and thinking only that the breach his senseless jealousy had made between their two hearts was now immeasurably widened by the hand of fate. In some sort he felt himself an innocent agent in the child's loss, and scarcely dared hope for his wife's forgiveness. "Come in," he said, pausing, as a knock echoed on the door with military precision. "Ah! Fontenay, is it you? I expected Keene, the detective. Come in--sit down." Captain Fontenay did as requested, turning a silent look of commiseration on his friend. "I have just come from calling on Miss Clendenon," he observed, "and learned that Mrs. Conway has not yet returned from Mrs. Winans' hotel. In fact, I believe she thinks best to remain with her until she gets better. She has, as Miss Lulu informed me, taken rooms for herself, and Miss Clendenon, of course, who is to rejoin her there this evening--Conway remaining at his hotel." "Ah! that is kind of Mrs. Conway," said Winans, surprisedly. "I should not have expected so much kind feeling from one who has always appeared to me a mere cold-hearted devotee of fashion and pleasure." "The devil is not as black as he is painted," the captain quotes, sententiously. "This Miss Clendenon seems a pleasant, or rather, a sweet little creature," mused the Senator, aloud; "one of the sort of women, I think--don't you?--who is worthy the devoted affection of any one." "I think so," says the captain, with enthusiasm. "I was thinking"--musingly this--"that I would like her to know my wife--like to see a cordial friendship grow up between the two. Grace has never had an intimate female friend. She is singularly quiet, reticent, and reserved with every one. It would, I think, be something of a comfort to her to be brought into familiar intercourse with Willard Clendenon's sister. She needs the sympathy and society of one of her own sex." "Let us hope they may become friends," says the captain, heartily. "But, Fontenay, this illness of Grace--I heard a rumor of it to-day--our unfortunate affairs are by this time a town-talk. She is not seriously out of sorts, I presume, and I am not brave enough to go there now, and look on the desolation I have wrought." Fontenay walked across the room and laid his hand on the other's arm, gravely and sympathizingly.