as
briefly as you can, what I can do for you."

"Are you Dr. Philip Staines?"

"I am, madam, at your service--for five minutes. Can't quit my patient
long, just now."

"Oh, sir, thank God I have found you. Be prepared for ill news--sad
news--a terrible calamity--I can't speak. Read that, sir." And she
handed him Tadcaster's note.

He took it, and read it.

He buried his face in his hands. "Christopher! my poor, poor boy!"
he groaned. But suddenly a terrible anxiety seized him. "Who knows of
this?" he asked.

"Only myself, sir. I came here to break it to her."

"You are a good, kind lady, for being so thoughtful. Madam, if this gets
to my niece's ears, it will kill her, as sure as we stand here."

"Then let us keep it from her. Command me, sir. I will do anything. I
will live here--take the letters in--the journals--anything."

"No, no; you have done your part, and God bless you for it. You must not
stay here. Your ladyship's very presence, and your agitation, would set
the servants talking, and some idiot-fiend among them babbling--there is
nothing so terrible as a fool."

"May I remain at the inn, sir; just one night?"

"Oh yes, I wish you would; and I will run over, if all is well with
her--well with her? poor unfortunate girl!"

Lady Cicely saw he wished her gone, and she went directly.

At nine o'clock that same evening, as she lay on a sofa in the best room
of the inn, attended by her maid, Dr. Philip Staines came to her. She
dismissed her maid.

Dr. Philip was too old, in other words, had lost too many friends, to
be really broken down by bereavement; but he was strangely subdued. The
loud tones were out of him, and the loud laugh, and even the keen sneer.
Yet he was the same man; but with a gentler surface; and this was not
without its pathos.

"Well, madam," said he gravely and quietly. "It is as it always has
been. 'As is the race of leaves, so that of man.' When one falls,
another comes. Here's a little Christopher come, in place of him that is
gone: a brave, beautiful boy, ma'am; the finest but one I ever brought
into the world. He is come to take his father's place in our hearts--I
see you valued his poor father, ma'am--but he comes too late for me. At
your age, ma'am, friendships come naturally; they spring like loves in
the soft heart of youth: at seventy, the gate is not so open; the soil
is more sterile. I shall never care for another Christopher; never see
another grow to man's esta