If the flame of vitality that was flickering so feebly went out Carnaby would be his daughter's, and the burden which almost crushed him lifted.

If it burned on there was at the best a long struggle with adversity before him, and at the worst disgrace, and possibly a prison.
A very little thing, he knew, would turn the scale, an effort made in delirium, a draught that struck too shrewdly on the fevered frame, and the issue, of stupendous importance as it was to both of them, lay in his daughter's hands.

Seaforth and the doctor slept the sleep of exhaustion, and Deringham could have laughed with bitter mirthlessness at the irony of it all.

Until she had quarrelled with her maid, Alice Deringham had apparently been incapable of putting on her own dresses unassisted, and it seemed that the grim, mysterious destiny which treated men as puppets and traversed all their schemes was the one factor to reckon with in that comedy.

Deringham, however, found little solace in such reflections, and could not lie still, and rising, strained his ears to listen.