r. Just
as they approached the lower door, leading to the old house, it was
flung open, and Steadman's wife stood before them pale with terror.

'The doctor,' she cried; 'send for Mr. Horton, somebody, for God's sake.
Oh, my lord,' with a sudden burst of sobbing, 'I'm afraid he's dead.'

'Mary, despatch some one for Horton,' said Lord Hartfield. Keeping his
wife back with one hand, he closed the door against her, and then
followed Mrs. Steadman through the long low corridor to her husband's
sitting-room.

James Steadman was lying upon his back upon the hearth, near the spot
were Lord Hartfield had seen him sleeping in his arm-chair a month ago.

One look at the distorted face, dark with injected blood, the dreadful
glassy glare of the eyes, the foam-stained lips, told that all was over.
The faithful servant had died at his post. Whatever his charge had been,
his term of service was ended. There was a vacancy in Lady Maulevrier's
household.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE DAY OF RECKONING.

Lord Hartfield stayed with the frightened wife while she knelt beside
that awful figure on the hearth, wringing her hands with piteous
bewailings and lamentations over the unconscious clay. He had always
been a good husband to her, she murmured; hard and stern perhaps, but a
good man. And she had obeyed him without a question. Whatever he did or
said she had counted right.

'We have not had a happy life, though there are many who have envied us
her ladyship's favour,' she said in the midst of her lamentations. 'No
one knows where the shoe pinches but those who have to wear it. Poor
James! Early and late, early and late, studying her ladyship's
interests, caring and thinking, in order to keep trouble away from her.
Always on the watch always on the listen. That's what wore him out, poor
fellow!'

'My good soul, your husband was an old man,' argued Lord Hartfield, in
a consolatory tone, 'and the end must come to all of us somehow.'

'He might have lived to be a much older man if he had had less worry,'
said the wife, bending her face to kiss the cold dead brow. 'His days
were full of care. We should have been happier in the poorest cottage in
Grasmere than we ever were in this big grand house.'

Thus, in broken fragments of speech, Mrs. Steadman lamented over her
dead, while the heavy pendulum of the eight-day clock in the hall
sounded the slowly-passing moments, until the coming of the doctor broke
upon the quiet of the house