"What brings you home in this
unceremonious manner? Are you ill? Has anything happened?"

"Am I ill? Yes, by heart is broken--dying within me. Has anything
happened? My wife is lost to me forever!" he cried, in a hollow tone, as
he sank weakly into a chair and groaned aloud.

"What can I do for you? Let me call John to remove your boots and bring
you dry clothing," his sister said, thoroughly alarmed by his appearance;
and suiting the action to her words, she rang for the butler.

John came, and attended to his master's wants with alacrity. Wood was
piled upon the already cheerful fire, something hot was provided the
traveler to drink, and Lady Linton soon had the satisfaction of seeing
something like warmth and life stealing into her brother's haggard face.

She understood at once that he must have been nearly crushed upon
receiving the document which she had sent him, and that he had immediately
started for home. He must have been taken ill on the way and been detained
else he would have been there before, and she could imagine how he would
chafe over the delay, and how heart-sick he had grown over the fact of
being too late to stay the proceedings for the divorce.

She dreaded to have him know that the die was irrevocably cast, although
his own words had told her that he apprehended it; but she absolutely
feared the first passionate outbreak when she should give him those other
papers that had but just arrived.

When he began to grow more calm, and to realize the comfort of being once
more before his own hearthstone Lady Linton stole softly away to confer
with the housekeeper about preparing him something specially tempting for
his supper.

She was absent perhaps fifteen minutes, and was about to return to him,
when she was startled by a heavy fall on the floor above her.

Her heart told her what had caused it, and she hurried up stairs with all
the speed that fear could lend to her feet, and burst into the library, to
find her brother stretched lifeless upon the floor, an open paper clutched
tightly in his hand, while John, the faithful butler, was bending over him
in an agony of terror.

"Send for Sir Herbert Randal at once, then come back to me," commanded her
ladyship, as she stooped to lift her brother's head to place a cushion
under it and loosen his necktie.

John sped to do her bidding, and during his absence Lady Linton succeeded
in removing that tell-tale document from Sir William's hand, and loc