oked himself dead with laughter. He is permanently bluer from
that hour, and constantly wheezes to himself, his lobster eyes starting
out of his head, 'Damme, Sir, the woman's a born idiot!'

And the ruined man. How does he pass the hours, alone?

'Let him remember it in that room, years to come!' He did remember it.
It was heavy on his mind now; heavier than all the rest.

'Let him remember it in that room, years to come! The rain that
falls upon the roof, the wind that mourns outside the door, may have
foreknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let him remember it in that
room, years to come!'

He did remember it. In the miserable night he thought of it; in the
dreary day, the wretched dawn, the ghostly, memory-haunted twilight.
He did remember it. In agony, in sorrow, in remorse, in despair! 'Papa!
Papa! Speak to me, dear Papa!' He heard the words again, and saw
the face. He saw it fall upon the trembling hands, and heard the one
prolonged low cry go upward.

He was fallen, never to be raised up any more. For the night of his
worldly ruin there was no to-morrow's sun; for the stain of his domestic
shame there was no purification; nothing, thank Heaven, could bring his
dead child back to life. But that which he might have made so different
in all the Past--which might have made the Past itself so different,
though this he hardly thought of now--that which was his own work,
that which he could so easily have wrought into a blessing, and had set
himself so steadily for years to form into a curse: that was the sharp
grief of his soul.

Oh! He did remember it! The rain that fell upon the roof, the wind that
mourned outside the door that night, had had foreknowledge in their
melancholy sound. He knew, now, what he had done. He knew, now, that
he had called down that upon his head, which bowed it lower than the
heaviest stroke of fortune. He knew, now, what it was to be rejected and
deserted; now, when every loving blossom he had withered in his innocent
daughter's heart was snowing down in ashes on him.

He thought of her, as she had been that night when he and his bride came
home. He thought of her as she had been, in all the home-events of the
abandoned house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone had
never changed. His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk into
a polluted creature, his flatterer and friend had been transformed into
the worst of villains, his riches had melted away, the very