ses a jeweler's box, with a ring in it--Armadale's
present to me on my marriage. It is a ruby--but rather a small one, and
set in the worst possible taste. He would have given Miss Milroy a ring
worth ten times the money, if it had been _her_ marriage present. There
is no more hateful creature, in my opinion, than a miserly young man. I
wonder whether his trumpery little yacht will drown him?

"I am so excited and fluttered, I hardly know what I am writing. Not
that I shrink from what is coming--I only feel as if I was being hurried
on faster than I quite like to go. At this rate, if nothing happens,
Midwinter will have married me by the end of the week. And then--!"

"August 6th.--If anything could startle me now, I should feel startled
by the news that has reached me to-day.

"On his return to the hotel this morning, after getting the
marriage-license, Midwinter found a telegram waiting for him. It
contained an urgent message from Armadale, announcing that Mr. Brock had
had a relapse, and that all hope of his recovery was pronounced by the
doctors to be at an end. By the dying man's own desire, Midwinter was
summoned to take leave of him, and was entreated by Armadale not to lose
a moment in starting for the rectory by the first train.

"The hurried letter which tells me this tells me also that, by the time
I receive it, Midwinter will be on his way to the West. He promises
to write at greater length, after he has seen Mr. Brock, by to-night's
post.

"This news has an interest for me, which Midwinter little suspects.
There is but one human creature, besides myself, who knows the secret of
his birth and his name; and that one is the old man who now lies waiting
for him at the point of death. What will they say to each other at the
last moment? Will some chance word take them back to the time when I was
in Mrs. Armadale's service at Madeira? Will they speak of Me?"

"August 7th.--The promised letter has just reached me. No parting words
have been exchanged between them: it was all over before Midwinter
reached Somersetshire. Armadale met him at the rectory gate with the
news that Mr. Brock was dead.

"I try to struggle against it, but, coming after the strange
complication of circumstances that has been closing round me for weeks
past, there is something in this latest event of all that shakes my
nerves. But one last chance of detection stood in my way when I opened
my diary yesterday. When I open it to-day,