pect entirely lost
and drowned in the dignity of death.

Chide and the doctor were in low-voiced consultation at one end of the
room; Lady Lucy sat beside the body, her face buried in her hands;
Marsham stood behind her.

Brown, the butler, noiselessly entered the room, and approached Chide.

"Please sir, Lord Broadstone's messenger is here. He thinks you might
wish him to take back a letter to his lordship."

Chide turned abruptly.

"Lord Broadstone's messenger?"

"He brought a letter for Mr. Ferrier, sir, half an hour ago."

Chide's face changed.

"Where is the letter?" He turned to the doctor, who shook his head.

"I saw nothing when we brought him in."

Marsham, who had overheard the conversation, came forward.

"Perhaps on the grass--"

Chide--pale, with drawn brows--looked at him a moment in silence.

Marsham hurried to the garden and to the spot under the yews, where the
death had taken place. Round the garden chairs were signs of trampling
feet--the feet of the gardeners who had carried the body. A medley of
books, opened letters, and working-materials lay on the grass. Marsham
looked through them; they all belonged to Diana or Mrs. Colwood. Then he
noticed a cushion which had fallen beside the chair, and a corner of
newspaper peeping from below it. He lifted it up.

Below lay Broadstone's open letter, in its envelope, addressed first in
the Premier's well-known handwriting to "The Right Honble. John Ferrier,
M.P."--and, secondly, in wavering pencil, to "Lady Lucy Marsham,
Tallyn Hall."

Marsham turned the letter over, while thoughts hurried through his
brain. Evidently Ferrier had had time to read it. Why that address to
his mother?--and in that painful hand--written, it seemed, with the
weakness of death already upon him?

The newspaper? Ah!--the _Herald_!--lying as though, after reading it,
Ferrier had thrown it down and let the letter drop upon it, from a hand
that had ceased to obey him. As Marsham saw it the color rushed into his
cheeks. He stooped and raised it. Suddenly he noticed on the margin of
the paper a pencilled line, faint and wavering, like the words written
on the envelope. It ran beside a passage in the article "from a
correspondent," and as he looked at it consciousness and pulse paused
in dismay. There, under his eye, in that dim mark, was the last word and
sign of John Ferrier.

He was still staring at it when a sound disturbed him. Lady Lucy came to
him, feebly, acros