A few mornings afterwards, Lancelot, as he glanced his eye over the columns of The Times, stopped short at the beloved name of Whitford. To his disgust and disappointment, it only occurred in one of those miserable cases, now of weekly occurrence, of concealing the birth of a child. He was turning from it, when he saw Bracebridge’s name. Another look sufficed to show him that he ought to go at once to the colonel, who had returned the day before from Norway.

A few minutes brought him to his friend’s lodging, but The Times had arrived there before him. Bracebridge was sitting over his untasted breakfast, his face buried in his hands.

‘Do not speak to me,’ he said, without looking up. ‘It was right of you to come — kind of you; but it is too late.’

He started, and looked wildly round him, as if listening for some sound which he expected, and then laid his head down on the table. Lancelot turned to go.

‘No — do not leave me! Not alone, for God’s sake, not alone!’

Lancelot sat down. There was a fearful alteration in Bracebridge. His old keen self-confident look had vanished. He was haggard, life-weary, shame-stricken, almost abject. His limbs looked quite shrunk and powerless, as he rested his head on the table before him, and murmured incoherently from time to time —

‘My own child! And I never shall have another! No second chance for those who — Oh Mary! Mary! you might have waited — you might have trusted me! And why should you? — ay, why, indeed? And such a pretty baby, too! — just like his father!’

Lancelot laid his hand kindly on his shoulder.

‘My dearest Bracebridge, the evidence proves that the child was born dead.’

‘They lie!’ he said, fiercely, starting up. ‘It cried twice after it was born!’

Lancelot stood horror-struck.

‘I heard it last night, and the night before that, and the night before that again, under my pillow, shrieking — stifling — two little squeaks, like a caught hare; and I tore the pillows off it — I did; and once I saw it, and it had beautiful black eyes — just like its father — just like a little miniature that used to lie on my mother’s table, when I knelt at her knee, before they sent me out “to see life,” and Eton, and the army, and Crockford’s, and Newmarket, and fine gentlemen, and fine ladies, and luxury, and flattery, brought me to this! Oh, father! father! was that the only way to make a gentleman of your son? — There it is again! Don’t you hear it? — under the sofa cushions! Tear them off! Curse you! Save it!’

And, with a fearful oath, the wretched man sent Lancelot staggering across the room, and madly tore up the cushions.

A long postman’s knock at the door. — He suddenly rose up quite collected.

‘The letter! I knew it would come. She need not have written it: I know what is in it.’

The servant’s step came up the stairs. Poor Bracebridge turned to Lancelot with something of his own stately determination.

‘I must be alone when I receive this letter. Stay here.’ And with compressed lips and fixed eyes he stalked out at the door, and shut it.

Lancelot heard him stop; then the servant’s footsteps down the stairs; then the colonel’s treading, slowly and heavily, went step by step up to the room above. He shut that door too. A dead silence followed. Lancelot stood in fearful suspense, and held his breath to listen. Perhaps he had fainted? No, for then he would have heard a fall. Perhaps he had fallen on the bed? He would go and see. No, he would wait a little longer. Perhaps he was praying? He had told Lancelot to pray once — he dared not interrupt him now. A slight stir — a noise as of an opening box. Thank God, he was, at least, alive! Nonsense! Why should he not be alive? What could happen to him? And yet he knew that something was going to happen. The silence was ominous — unbearable; the air of the room felt heavy and stifling, as if a thunderstorm were about to burst. He longed to hear the man raging and stamping. And yet he could not connect the thought of one so gay and full of gallant life, with the terrible dread that was creeping over him — with the terrible scene which he had just witnessed. It must be all a temporary excitement — a mistake — a hideous dream, which the next post would sweep away. He would go and tell him so. No, he could not stir. His limbs seemed leaden, his feet felt rooted to the ground, as in long nightmare. And still the intolerable silence brooded overhead.

What broke it? A dull, stifled report, as of a pistol fired against the ground; a heavy fall; and again the silence of death.

He rushed upstairs. A corpse lay on its face upon the floor, and from among its hair, a crimson thread crept slowly across the carpet. It was all over. He bent over the head, but one look was sufficient. He did not try to lift it up.

On the table lay the fatal letter. Lancelot knew that he had a right to read it. It was scrawled, mis-spelt — but there were no tear-blots on the paper:—

‘Sir — I am in prison — and where are you? Cruel man! Where were you all those miserable weeks, while I was coming nearer and nearer to my shame? Murdering dumb beasts in foreign lands. You have murdered more than them. How I loved you once! How I hate you now! But I have my revenge. Your baby cried twice after it was born!’

Lancelot tore the letter into a hundred pieces, and swallowed them, for every foot in the house was on the stairs.

So there was terror, and confusion, and running in and out: but there were no wet eyes there except those of Bracebridge’s groom, who threw himself on the body, and would not stir. And then there was a coroner’s inquest; and it came out in the evidence how ‘the deceased had been for several days very much depressed, and had talked of voices and apparitions;’ whereat the jury — as twelve honest, good-natured Christians were bound to do — returned a verdict of temporary insanity; and in a week more the penny-a-liners grew tired; and the world, too, who never expects anything, not even French revolutions, grew tired also of repeating — ‘Dear me! who would have expected it?’ and having filled up the colonel’s place, swaggered on as usual, arm-inarm with the flesh and the devil.

Bracebridge’s death had, of course, a great effect on Lancelot’s spirit. Not in the way of warning, though — such events seldom act in that way, on the highest as well as on the lowest minds. After all, your ‘Rakes’ Progresses,’ and ‘Atheists’ Deathbeds,’ do no more good than noble George Cruikshank’s ‘Bottle’ will, because every one knows that they are the exception, and not the rule; that the Atheist generally dies with a conscience as comfortably callous as a rhinocerous-hide; and the rake, when old age stops his power of sinning, becomes generally rather more respectable than his neighbours. The New Testament deals very little in appeals ad terrorem; and it would be well if some, who fancy that they follow it, would do the same, and by abstaining from making ‘hell-fire’ the chief incentive to virtue, cease from tempting many a poor fellow to enlist on the devil’s side the only manly feeling he has left — personal courage.

But yet Lancelot was affected. And when, on the night of the colonel’s funeral, he opened, at hazard, Argemone’s Bible, and his eyes fell on the passage which tells how ‘one shall be taken and another left,’ great honest tears of gratitude dropped upon the page; and he fell on his knees, and in bitter self-reproach thanked the new found Upper Powers, who, as he began to hope, were leading him not in vain — that he had yet a life before him wherein to play the man.

And now he felt that the last link was broken between him and all his late frivolous companions. All had deserted him in his ruin but this one — and he was silent in the grave. And now, from the world and all its toys and revelry, he was parted once and for ever; and he stood alone in the desert, like the last Arab of a plague-stricken tribe, looking over the wreck of ancient cities, across barren sands, where far rivers gleamed in the distance, that seemed to beckon him away into other climes, other hopes, other duties. Old things had passed away — when would all things become new?

Not yet, Lancelot. Thou hast still one selfish hope, one dream of bliss, however impossible, yet still cherished. Thou art a changed man — but for whose sake? For Argemone’s. Is she to be thy god, then? Art thou to live for her, or for the sake of One greater than she? All thine idols are broken — swiftly the desert sands are drifting over them, and covering them in. — All but one — must that, too, be taken from thee?

One morning a letter was put into Lancelot’s hands, bearing the Whitford postmark. Tremblingly he tore it open. It contained a few passionate words from Honoria. Argemone was dying of typhus fever, and entreating to see him once again; and Honoria had, with some difficulty, as she hinted, obtained leave from her parents to send for him. His last bank note carried him down to Whitford; and, calm and determined, as one who feels that he has nothing more to lose on earth, and whose torment must henceforth become his element, he entered the Priory that evening.

He hardly spoke or looked at a soul; he felt that he was there on an errand which none understood; that he ............