"My dear, will you see your husband? Senator Winans desires an interview with you." Something in the name seemed to fix and hold her wandering thoughts. She half-lifted herself, resting on her elbow and sweeping her hand across her brow. "My husband--did you say that?" "Yes; listen, dear. He has come to see you, and is waiting in the parlor. May I bring him in? Will you see him?" A flash of hope in the fever-bright violet eyes, a hopeful ring in the trembling voice: "The baby--he has brought the baby?" "No, not yet; he hopes to soon," taking the small hands and softly caressing them with hers, "indeed, you are mistaken, Gracie, in thinking, dear child, that he is deceiving you in this matter. He is in great distress, longs to tell you so, and to try to comfort you; say that you will see him." "No, not I; you do not know him--he is so cruel. Oh, my poor heart!" clasping her hands across her heaving breast, "He has come to triumph in my anguish, to laugh at the wreck he has made of my life." "Not so, Gracie, dear little one, he has come to sympathize with you--won't you let him come?" "No, no, never!" rising straight up and shaking herself free of Mrs. Conway's detaining hand, the delirium clouding her brain again. "Oh, never till he comes to me with our baby in his arms will I look upon his face again. Tell him this, and say that if he entered that door I would most surely spring from that window rather than look on his face with its smile of triumph at my suffering." She fell back, exhausted and quite delirious now, and Mrs. Conway turned with a heavy heart to carry the ill tidings to the man who waited in the next room. She was spared that pain. The clear, bell-like voice, sharpened by anger and scorn that was strange to that gentle spirit, had penetrated the next room, and he knew his doom and felt it to be just, as he stood in the middle of the floor, his hands clasped behind him, his head bowed on his breast, a perfect picture of humiliation and despair. "I have heard," he said, with a ghastly smile, as her fingers touched his arm. "My poor boy!" she said. "It is just," he said, in a whisper of intense pain. "God knows I merit worse at her hands, but, all the same, it goes hard with me--the worse because, as I told you just now, I leave for Europe to-morrow in quest of our child. Oh! Mrs. Conway, take care of her while I am gone. Don't--don't let her die!" "She shall not die," said Lulu's soft, low tones, as she glided into the room and up to his side. "I will--we all will--do everything to keep her for you until you come back to make her happiness your chief care in life hereafter. She must not, will not, die!" He looked up, caught her hand, and touched it gratefully to his lips.