giving his uncle aconitine. I could prove that
his uncle had died of aconitine. He could not himself account for
the facts--he was absolutely in my power. I did not wish him to
be condemned, Maisie. I only hoped that he would leave the court
discredited and ruined. I give you my word that my evidence would have
saved him from the scaffold."

Hilda was listening, with a set, white face.

"Proceed!" said she, and held out the brandy once more.

"I did not give the Admiral any more aconitine after I had taken over
the case. But what was already in his system was enough. It was evident
that we had seriously under-estimated the lethal dose. As to your
father, Maisie, you have done me an injustice. You have always thought
that I killed him."

"Proceed!" said she.

"I speak now from the brink of the grave, and I tell you that I did
not. His heart was always weak, and it broke down under the strain.
Indirectly I was the cause--I do not seek to excuse anything; but it was
the sorrow and the shame that killed him. As to Barclay, the chemist,
that is another matter. I will not deny that I was concerned in that
mysterious disappearance, which was a seven days' wonder in the Press.
I could not permit my scientific calm to be interrupted by the
blackmailing visits of so insignificant a person. And then after many
years you came, Maisie. You also got between me and that work which was
life to me. You also showed that you would rake up this old matter and
bring dishonour upon a name which has stood for something in science.
You also--but you will forgive me. I have held on to life for your sake
as an atonement for my sins. Now, I go! Cumberledge--your notebook.
Subjective sensations, swimming in the head, light flashes before the
eyes, soothing torpor, some touch of coldness, constriction of the
temples, humming in the ears, a sense of sinking--sinking--sinking!"

It was an hour later, and Hilda and I were alone in the chamber of
death. As Sebastian lay there, a marble figure, with his keen eyes
closed and his pinched, thin face whiter and serener than ever, I could
not help gazing at him with some pangs of recollection. I could not
avoid recalling the time when his very name was to me a word of
power, and when the thought of him roused on my cheek a red flush
of enthusiasm. As I looked I murmured two lines from Browning's
Grammarian's Funeral:

This is our Master, famous, calm, and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.