e, supporting his limp arms and
sobbing. Then Dolly arose, and with one hand grasping the selvage of
the curtain, fixed one long gaze upon her father's corpse. There were
no tears in her eyes, no sign of anguish in her face, no proof that she
knew or felt what she had done. And without a word she left the room.

"Hard to the last, even hard to you!" cried Faith, as her tears fell
upon the cold forehead. "Oh, darling, how could you have loved her so?"

"It is not hardness; it is madness. Follow your sister," Lord Southdown
said. "We have had calamities enough."

But Faith was fighting with all her strength against an attack of
hysterics, and fetching long gasps to control herself. "I will go,"
replied Mrs. Stubbard; "this poor child is quite unfit. What on earth is
become of Lady Scudamore? A doctor's widow might have done some good."

The doctor's widow was doing good elsewhere. In the first rush from the
dining-room, Lady Scudamore had been pushed back by no less a person
than Mrs. Stubbard; when at last she reached the study door she found
it closed against her, and entering the next room, saw the flash of the
pistol fired at Twemlow. Bravely hurrying to the spot by the nearest
outlet she could find, she became at once entirely occupied with this
new disaster. For two men who ran up with a carriage lamp declared that
the gentleman was as dead as a door-nail, and hastened to make good
their words by swinging him up heels over head. But the lady made them
set him down and support his head, while she bathed the wound, and sent
to the house for his father and mother, and when he could be safely
brought in-doors, helped with her soft hands beneath his hair, and then
became so engrossed with him that the arrival of her long-lost son was
for several hours unknown to her.

For so many things coming all at once were enough to upset any one.
Urgent despatches came hot for the hand that now was cold for ever; not
a moment to lose, when time had ceased for the man who was to urge it.
There were plenty of officers there, but no one clearly entitled to take
command. Moreover, the public service clashed with the personal rage of
the moment. Some were for rushing to the stables, mounting every horse
that could be found, and scouring the country, sword in hand, for that
infernal murderer. Some, having just descried the flash of beacon from
the headland, and heard the alarm-guns from shore and sea, were for
hurrying to their regime