eika) writhe. Latin
hexameters, of course. An epistle to his heir presumptive... "Vae tibi,"
he began,

"Vae tibi, vae misero, nisi circumspexeris artes
Femineas, nam nulla salus quin femina possit
Tradere, nulla fides quin"--

"Quin," he repeated. In writing soliloquies, his trouble was to
curb inspiration. The thought that he was addressing his
heir-presumptive--now heir-only-too-apparent--gave him pause. Nor, he
reflected, was he addressing this brute only, but a huge posthumous
audience. These hexameters would be sure to appear in the "authorised"
biography. "A melancholy interest attaches to the following lines,
written, it would seem, on the very eve of"... He winced. Was it really
possible, and no dream, that he was to die to-morrow--to-day?

Even you, unassuming reader, go about with a vague notion that in your
case, somehow, the ultimate demand of nature will be waived. The
Duke, until he conceived his sudden desire to die, had deemed himself
certainly exempt. And now, as he sat staring at his window, he saw in
the paling of the night the presage of the dawn of his own last day.
Sometimes (orphaned though he was in early childhood) he had even found
it hard to believe there was no exemption for those to whom he stood in
any personal relation. He remembered how, soon after he went to Eton,
he had received almost with incredulity the news of the death of his
god-father, Lord Stackley, an octogenarian.... He took from the table
his album, knowing that on one of the earliest pages was inscribed his
boyish sense of that bereavement. Yes, here the passage was, written in
a large round hand:

"Death knocks, as we know, at the door of the cottage and of the castle.
He stalks up the front-garden and the steep steps of the semi-detached
villa, and plies the ornamental knocker so imperiously that the panels
of imitation stained glass quiver in the thin front-door. Even the
family that occupies the topmost story of a building without a lift is
on his ghastly visiting-list. He rattles his fleshless knuckles against
the door of the gypsy's caravan. Into the savage's tent, wigwam, or
wattled hut, he darts unbidden. Even on the hermit in the cave he forces
his obnoxious presence. His is an universal beat, and he walks it with
a grin. But be sure it is at the sombre portal of the nobleman that he
knocks with the greatest gusto. It is there, where haply his visit will
be commemorated with a hatchment; it is t