For fifteen days and nights Churchill Penwyn watched beside his wife’s bed with only such brief intervals of rest as exhausted nature demanded; an occasional hour, when he allowed himself to fall into a troubled slumber, on the sofa at the foot of the bed, from which he would start into sudden wakefulness, unrefreshed, but with no power to sleep longer. Even in sleep he did not lose consciousness. One awful idea for ever pursued him, the expectation of an inevitable end. She, for whom he could have been content to sacrifice all that earth can give of fame or fortune, she with whom it would have been sweet to him to begin a life of care and toil, his idolized wife, was to be taken from him.

London physicians had been summoned, two of the greatest. There had been solemn consultations in Madge’s pretty dressing-room, the room where she had been so utterly happy in the first bright years of her wedded life; and after each counsel of medical authorities, Churchill had gone in to hear their verdict, gravely, vaguely delivered,—a verdict which left him at sea, tempest-tossed by alternate waves of hope and fear.

There had come one awful morning, after a fortnight’s uncertainty, when the great London physician and Dr. Hillyard received him in absolute silence. The little grey-haired Seacomb doctor turned away his face, and shuffled over to the window; the London physician grasped Churchill’s hand without a word.

‘I understand you,’ said Churchill. ‘All is over.’

His calm tone surprised the two medical men; but the man of wider experience was not deceived by it. He had seen that quiet manner, heard that passionless tone too often before.

‘All has been done that could be done,’ he said kindly. ‘It may be a comfort for you to remember that in days to come, however little it lessens your loss now.’

‘Comfort!’ echoed Churchill, drearily. ‘There is no comfort for me without her. I thank you for having done your uttermost, gentlemen. I will go back to her.’

He left them without another word, and returned to the darkened room where Madge Penwyn’s brief life was drifting fast to its untimely close, under the despairing eyes of her sister Viola, who from first to last had shared Churchill’s watch.

But seldom had either of these two won a recognising glance from those clouded eyes,—a word of greeting from those parched lips. Only in delirium had Madge called her husband by his name, but in all her wanderings his name was ever on her lips, her broken thoughts were of him.

At the last, some hours after the doctors had spoken their final sentence and departed, those tender eyes were raised to Churchill’s face, with one long, penetrating look, love ineffable in death. The wasted arms were feebly raised. He understood the unexpressed desire, and drew them gently round his neck. The lovely head sank upon his breast, the lips parted in a happy smile, and with a faint sigh of contentment, bade farewell to earthly care.

Tearless, and with his calm, every-day manner, Churchill Penwyn made all arrangements for his wife’s funeral. The smallest details were not too insignificant for his attention. He opened all letters of condolence, arranged who, of the many who loved his wife, should be permitted to accompany her in that last solemn journey. He chose the grave where she was to lie—not in the stony vault of the Penwyns—but on the sunny slope of the hill, where summer breezes and summer birds should flit across her grave, and all the varying lights and colours of sky and cloud glorify and adorn it. Yet, in those few solemn days between death and burial, he contrived to spend the greater part of his time near that beloved clay. His only rest—or pretence of rest—was taken on a sofa in his wife’s dressing-room adjoining the spacious chamber, where, beneath whitest draperies, strewn with late roses and autumn violets, lay that marble form.

In the dead of night he spent long hours alone in that taper-lit bedchamber, kneeling beside the snowy bed—kneeling, and holding such commune as he might with that dear spirit hovering near him, and wondering dimly whether the dream of philosophers, the pious hope of Christians, were true, and there were verily a world where they two might see and know each other again.

Sir Nugent Bellingham had been telegraphed to at divers places, but having wandered into inaccessible regions on the borders of Hungary, to shoot big game with an Hungarian noble of vast wealth and almost regal surroundings, the only message that reached him had arrived on the very day of his daughter’s death. He reached Penwyn Manor, after travelling with all possible speed, in time for the funeral, altogether broken down by the shock which greeted him on his arrival. It had been a pleasant thing for him to lapse back into his old easy-going bachelor life—to feel himself a young man again—when his two daughters were safely provided for; but it was not the less a grief to lose the noble girl he had been at once proud and fond of.

The funeral train was longer than Churchill had planned, for his arrangements had included only the elect of the neighbourhood. All the poor whom Madge had cared for,—strong men and matrons, feeble old men and women, and little children,—came to swell the ranks of her mourners, dressed in rusty black—decent, tearful, reverent as at the shrine of a saint.

‘We have lost a friend such as we never had before and shall never see again.’ That was the cry which went up from Penwyn village, and many a hamlet far afield, whither Madge’s bounty had penetrated—where the sound of her carriage wheels had been the harbinger of joy.

Churchill had a strange pleasure, near akin to sharpest pain, as he stood in his place by the open grave on a sunless autumn morning, and saw the churchyard filled with that mournful crowd. She had been honoured and beloved. It was something to have won this for her—for her who had died for love of him. Yes, of that he had no doubt. His sin had slain her. Care for him, remorse for his crime, had sapped that young life.

A curious smile, cold as winter, flitted across Churchill’s face as he turned away from the grave, after throwing a shower of violets on the coffin. Some among the crowd noticed that faint smile, wondered at it.

‘Before another week has come, I shall be lying in my darling’s grave.’

That was what the smile meant.

When he went back to the Manor House, Viola, deeply compassionating his quiet grief, brought his son to him, thinking there might be some consolation in the little one’s love. Churchill kissed the boy gently, but somewhat coldly, and gave him back to his aunt.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you meant kindly by bringing him to me, but it only pains me to see him.’

‘Dear Churchill, I understand,’ answered Viola, pityingly, ‘but it will be different by and by.’

‘Yes,’ said Churchill, with a wintry smile, ‘it will be different by and by.’

He had received Justina’s letter—a noble letter, assuring him of her unwillingness to impoverish him or to lessen his position as lord of the manor.

‘Give me any share of your fortune which you think right and just,’ she wrote. ‘I have no desire for wealth or social importance. The duties of a large estate would be a burden to me; give me just sufficient to secure an independent future for myself and the gentleman who is to be my husband, and keep all the rest.’

Churchill re-read this letter to-day, calmly, deliberately. It had reached him at a time when Madge’s life still trembled in the balance, when there was still hope in his heart. He had not been able to give the letter a thought. To-day he answered it. He wrote briefly, but firmly,—

‘Your letter convinces me that you are good and generous,’ he began, ‘and though I ask, and can accept nothing for myself, it emboldens me to commit the future of my only son to your care. I surrender Penwyn Manor to you freely. Be as generous as you choose to my boy. He is the last male representative of the family to which you claim to belong, and he has good blood on both sides. Give him the portion of a younger son, if you like, but give him enough to secure him the status of a gentleman. His grandfather, Sir Nugent Bellingham, and his aunt, Miss Bellingham, will be his natural guardians.’

This was all. It was growing dusk as Churchill sealed this letter in its black-bordered envelope—soft grey autumn dusk. He went down to the hall, put the letter in the postbag, and went out into the shrubbery which screened the stables from the house.

There had been gentle showers in the afternoon, and arbutus and laurel were shining with raindrops. The balmy odour of the pines perfumed the cool evening air. Those showers had fallen upon her grave, he thought, that grave which should soon be reopened.

He opened a little gate leading into the stable yard. The place had a deserted look. Grooms and coachmen were in the house eating and drinking, and taking their dismal enjoyment out of this time of mourning. No one expected horses or carriages to be wanted on the day of a funeral. A solitary underling was lolling across the half-door of the harness-room smoking the pipe of discontent. He recognised Churchill and came over to him.

‘Shall I call Hunter, sir?’

‘No, I want to get a mouthful of fresh air on the moor, that’s all. You can saddle Tarpan.’

A gallop across the moor was known to be the Squire’s favourite recreation, as Tarpan was his favourite steed.

‘He’s very fresh, sir. You haven’t ridden him for a good bit, you see, sir,’ remonstrated the underling, apologetically.

‘I don’t think he’ll be too fresh for me. He has been exercised, I suppose?’

‘Oh, yes, sir,’ replied the underling, sacrificing his love of truth to his fidelity as a subordinate.

‘You can saddle him, then. You know my saddle?’

‘Yes, sir. There’s the label hangs over it.’

Churchill went into the harness-room, and while the man was bringing out Tarpan, put on a pair of hunting spurs, an unnecessary proceeding, it would seem, with such a horse as Tarpan, which was more prone to need a heavy hand on the curb than the stimulus of the spur. The bay came out of his loose box looking slightly mischievous, ears vibrating, head restless, and a disposition to take objection to the pavement of the yard, made manifest by his legs. The Squire paid no attention to these small indications of temper, but swung himself into the saddle and rode out of the yard, after divers attempts on Tarpan’s side to back into one of the coachhouses, or do himself a mischief against the pump.

‘I never seed such a beast for trying to spile his money value,’ mused the underling when horse and rider had vanished from his ken. ‘He seems as if he’d take a spiteful pleasure in laming his-self, or taking the bark off to the tune of a pony.’

Away over the broad free expanse of grey moorland rode Churchill Penwyn. There had been plenty of rain of late, and the soft turf was soft and springy. The horse’s rapture burst forth in a series of joyful snorts as he felt the fresh breeze from the broad salt sea and stretched his strong limbs to a thundering gallop.

Past the trees that he had planted, far away from the roads that he had made, went the Squire of Penwyn, up to the open moorland above the sea the wide grey waters facing him with their fringe of surf, the darkening evening sky above him, and just one narrow line of palest saffron yonder where the sun had gone down.

Even at that wild pace, earth and sea flying past him like the shadows of a magic lantern, Churchill Penwyn had time for thought.

He surveyed his life, and wondered what he might have made of it had he been wiser. Yes, for the crime by which he had leaped at once into possession of his heart’s desires seemed to him now an act of folly; like one of those moves at chess which, lightly considered, point the way to speedy triumph, and whereby the rash player wrecks his game.

He had won wife, fortune, position; and lo! in little more than two years, the knowledge of his crime had slain that idolized wife, and an undreamed-of claimant had arisen to dispute his fortune.

The things he had grasped at were shadows, and like shadows had departed.

‘After all,’ h............