Again Colin had risen in his bed with a little start. This time he was scarcely sensible of the pain which every motion caused him. He fancied afterwards that for that moment his heart stood still in his bosom, and the pulses in his veins stopped beating. The shock was so strange, so sudden, so unlooked-for. He sat up--struggled up--upon his pillows, and instinctively and unawares faced and confronted the new Thing which approached him. In that moment of strange consciousness and revelation he felt as if the intimation was true--as if his doom was sealed and his days numbered. He did not look at the anxious woman who was wringing her arms by his bedside, nor at any external object; but with an irresistible impulse confronted dumbly the new world--the changed existence. When he laid himself down again it seemed to Colin as if years had passed over his head. He said some vague words of thanks, without being very well aware what he was saying, to Lady Frankland, and then lay silent, stunned and bewildered, like a man who had received a blow. What she said to him afterwards, or how long she remained in the room, he was scarcely aware of. Colin belonged to a race which had no weak members; he had been used to nothing but strength and health--wholesome rural life and vigour--all his days. He had even learned, without knowing it, to take a certain pride in his own physical gifts, and in those of his family, and to look with compassionate contempt on people who were “delicate” and obliged to take care of themselves. The idea that such a fate might by any possibility fall to himself had never once occurred to him. It was an impossible contingency at which, even a week ago, the strong young man, just entering upon the full possession of his powers, would have laughed, as beyond the range of imagination. He might die, no doubt, like any other man--might be snatched out of the world by violent disease or sudden fever, as other strong men had been; but to have his strength stolen from him while still his life remained, had appeared a thing beyond the bounds of possibility until now.