Alan Wyverne was away from Dene before the half hour was out; but he left a sealed note behind him for his aunt. "My lady" was waiting the issue somewhat anxiously; it is needless to say, her health was the merest pretext. She read the note through, calmly enough; but, when she opened her escritoire to lock it up safely, her hands shook like aspen-leaves, and she drank off eagerly the strongest dose of "red lavender" that had passed her lips for many a day. Does not that decisive interview seem absurdly abrupt and brief? It is true that I have purposely omitted many insignificant words and gestures; but if all these had been chronicled, it would still have been disappointingly matter-of-fact and meagre. Nevertheless--believe it--to build up a life's happiness is a work of time and labour, aided by great good fortune: to ruin and shatter it utterly is a question of a short half hour, even where no ill luck intervenes. It took months of toil to build the good ship Hesperus, though her timbers were seasoned and ready to hand; it took hours of trouble to launch her when thoroughly equipped for sea; but it took only a few minutes of wave-and-wind-play, to shiver her into splinters, when her keel crushed down on the reef of Norman's Woe. CHAPTER XVI. MISANTHROPOS. On the morning after the most disastrous of all his bad nights at hazard, Charles Fox was found by a friend who called, in fear and trembling, to offer assistance or condolence, lying on his sofa in lazy luxury, deep in an eclogue of Virgil. The magnificent indifference was probably not assumed, for there was little tinsel about that large honest nature, and he was not the man to indulge in private theatricals. Since I read that anecdote, I have always wondered that the successes achieved by the great Opposition leader were not more lasting and complete. Among the triumphs of mind over matter, that power of thoroughly abstracting the thoughts from recent grief or trouble, seems to stand first and foremost. Such sublime stoicism implies a strength of character and of will, that separates its possessor at once from his fellows: sooner or later, He must rule, and they must obey.