Little sent her maid to tell him dinner was ready.

The girl had hardly reached the top of the stairs, when she gave a
terrible scream that rang through the whole house.

Mrs. Little rushed upstairs, and found her clinging to the balusters,
and pointing at the floor, with eyes protruding and full of horror.
Her candle-stick had fallen from her benumbed hand; but the hall-lamp
revealed what her finger was quivering and pointing at: a dark fluid
trickling slowly out into the lobby from beneath the bedroom door.

It was blood.

The room was burst into, and the wretched, tottering wife, hanging upon
her sobbing servants, found her lover, her husband, her child's father,
lying on the floor, dead by his own hand; stone dead. A terrible sight
for strangers to see; but for her, what words can even shadow the horror
of it!

I drop the veil on her wild bursts of agony, and piteous appeals to him
who could not hear her cries.

The gaping wound that let out that precious life, her eye never ceased
to see it, nor her own heart to bleed with it, while she lived.

She was gently dragged away, and supported down to another room. Doctor
Amboyne came and did what he could for her; and that was--nothing.

At this time she seemed stupefied. But when Guy came beaming into the
room to tell her he had got her the money, a terrible scene occurred.
The bereaved wife uttered a miserable scream at sight of him, and
swooned away directly.

The maids gathered round her, laid her down, and cut her stays, and told
Guy the terrible tidings, in broken whispers, over her insensible body.

He rose to his feet horrified. He began to gasp and sob. And he yearned
to say something to comfort her. At that moment his house, his heart,
and all he had, were hers.

But, as soon as she came to herself, and caught sight of him, she
screamed out, "Oh, the sight of him! the sight of him!" and swooned away
again.

Then the women pushed him out of the room, and he went away with uneven
steps, and sick at heart.

He shut himself up in Raby Hall, and felt very sad and remorseful.
He directed his solicitor to render Mrs. Little every assistance, and
supply her with funds. But these good offices were respectfully declined
by Mr. Joseph Little, the brother of the deceased, who had come from
Birmingham to conduct the funeral and settle other matters.

Mr. Joseph Little was known to be a small master-cutler, who had risen
from a workman, and even now put bl