The words died away, caught and strangled by the relentless, stabbing pain, and Falconer, utterly at a loss, stood for a moment helplessly watching her, and then strode across the room meaning to call a woman to his aid. He opened the door hurriedly and then stopped short. On the shelf fixed against the wall facing him there lay his morning letters, and on the top of the pile lay one directed in Julian’s handwriting. Mrs. Romayne’s physical distress sank into insignificance for him. The physical suffering which had fallen to his lot during the past year had by no means obliterated the lifelong instinct which led him to look upon such weakness as a detail to be disregarded, and of women he knew nothing. He turned back into the room with the letter in his hand, and shutting the door again opened it hastily. It was the letter Julian had written on the previous day in his room in the Temple. “DEAR FALCONER,” he read,--“I’ve done for myself all round, and by the time you get this I shall be out of England. It’s penal servitude if I stay. The smash will come in a day or two and you will understand. It’s all up with me; but there’s my wife and child--for Heaven’s sake be kind to them. This is the address.” The address followed, and then the signature. For another moment Dennis Falconer stood motionless with his eyes fixed on the letter, so despairing in its hopeless brevity, so terribly eloquent of immeasurable disgrace and wrong. Then he lifted his head and turned towards Mrs. Romayne. She had not moved, she was apparently unconscious of his presence; the tense rigidity of her position had passed into a total collapse, in which all her figure seemed to have fallen together as if in absolute exhaustion. To Falconer she presented an appearance only of most desirable quiet, and he hesitated simply as to how he should so break to her what must be broken, as to excite her least. She would have to see the letter! He glanced at it again on the thought, and a cold shock seemed to strike him as he realised the total oblivion of his mother to which the young man’s last appeal bore witness. “I have received some news,” he said.