n Ames, delicate in health when recalled from
abroad, and still suffering from the fatigue of the deadly social
warfare which had preceded her sudden flight from her husband's
consuming wrath, had failed to rally from the indisposition which
seized her on the night of the grand Ames reception. For days she
slowly faded, and then went quickly down under a sharp, withering
attack of pneumonia. A few brief weeks after the formal opening of the
Ames palace its mistress had sighed away her blasted hopes, her vain
desires, her petty schemes of human conquest and revenge, and had gone
to face anew her problems on another plane of mortal thought. It was
rumored by the servants that, in her last hours, when she heard the
rustle of the death angel's wings beside her, a great terror had
stricken her, and she had called wildly for that son whom she had
never cared to know. It was whispered that she had begged of her
husband to seek the lad and lead him home; that she had pleaded with
him to strive, with the boy, to find the better things of life; that
she had begged him to warn and be warned of her present sufferings, as
she lay there, stripped of every earthly aid, impoverished in heart,
in soul, in mind, with her hands dusty and begrimed with the ashes of
this life's mocking spoils. How true these rumors, none might say.
What truth lay hidden in her mad ravings about the parentage of
Carmen, and her confused, muttered references to Monsignor Lafelle, no
one knew. But of those who stood about her bedside there was none who
could gainsay the awed whisperings of the servants that this haughty
leader of the great city's aristocracy had passed from this life into
the darkness beyond in pitiable misery and terror.

The news of his mother's death had come at a time when the boy was
wild with delirium, at an hour when Waite, and Hitt, and Carmen stood
with him in his room and strove to close their ears against the
shrieking of the demon that was tearing him. Hitt at once called up
Willett, and asked for instructions. A few minutes later came the
message that the Ames house was forever barred against the wayward
son. And it was not until this bright winter morning, when the lad
again sat clothed and in his right mind, that Carmen had gently broken
the news to him.

"I never knew her," the boy had said at length, rousing from his
meditations. "Few of the rich people's children know their parents. I
was brought up by nurses and tutors. I