s couch--when a fearful contortion convulsed his whole
body,--his eyes rolled up and became fixed--he fell heavily
back,--_dead_!

Quietly the surgeon covered again what was now nothing,--nothing but a
mutilated corpse.

"It's all over!" he announce briefly.

Errington heard these words in sickened silence. All over! Was it
possible? So soon? All over!--and he had come too late to punish the
would-be ravisher of his wife's honor,--too late! He still held the whip
in his hand with which he had meant to chastise that--that distorted,
mangled lump of clay yonder, . . . pah! he could not bear to think of
it, and he turned away, faint and dizzy. He felt,--rather than saw the
staircase,--down which he dreamily went, followed by Lorimer.

The two policemen were in the hall scribbling the cut-and-dry
particulars of the accident in their note-books, which having done, they
marched off, attended by a wandering, bilious-looking penny-a-liner who
was anxious to write a successful account of the "Shocking Fatality," as
it was called in the next day's newspapers. Then the bearers departed
cheerfully, carrying with them the empty stretcher. Then the jeweller,
who seemed quite unmoved respecting the sudden death of his lodger,
chatted amicably with the surgeon about the reputation and various
demerits of the deceased,--and Errington and Lorimer, as they passed
through the shop, heard him speaking of a person hitherto unheard of,
namely, Lady Francis Lennox, who had been deserted by her husband for
the past six years, and who was living uncomplainingly the life of an
art-student in Germany with her married sister, maintaining, by the work
of her own hands, her one little child, a boy of five.

"He never allowed her a farthing," said the conversational jeweller.
"And she never asked him for one. Mr. Wiggins, his lawyer--firm of
Wiggins & Whizzer, Furnival's Inn,--told me all about his affairs. Oh
yes--he was a regular "masher"--tip-top! Not worth much, I should say.
He must have spent over a thousand a year in keeping up that little
place at St. John's Wood for Violet Vere. He owes me five hundred.
However, Mr. Wiggins will see everything fair, I've no doubt. I've just
wired to him, announcing the death. I don't suppose any one will regret
him--except, perhaps, the woman at St. John's Wood. But I believe she's
playing for a bigger stake just now." And, stimulated by this thought,
he drew out from a handsome morocco case a superb pen