The physician standing by bent down his ear to the lips that still kept moving. He caught one word--"Mildred"--and some other syllables absolutely unintelligible. The frown on the brow and the contraction of the features, just then, surely did not come from pain. So--murmuring a farewell, that savoured, I fear, rather of ban than blessing--died Bernard Haldane--more tranquilly and serenely than saints and martyrs have died, who bore uncomplainingly all the burden and heat, and shrank from no self-sacrifice that could benefit their kind. The bitter face changed and softened strangely, they say, before the corpse was cold, till it settled into intense sadness, and ten years seemed taken from the dead man's age. That grave, pensive expression perhaps was a natural one, before the keen morbid sensibility was so cruelly warped and withered. It may be that he _did_ repent heartily at last, though he could not forgive; thinking of the poverty all round him that he had never stretched a hand to help, of the honest affection that he may have barred out when he shut himself up in his arid misanthropy. If he did once thoroughly realize this, and his utter impotence to make any amends, be sure the latest pang of his life was the sharpest of all. That is the worst of all philosophy--Epicurean or Stoic, seductive or repellant; it _will_ often fail just at the critical time of trial. The tough, self-reliant character, that meets misfortune savagely and defiantly like a personal foe, holds its own well for a while; but, if there be not Faith enough to teach humble, hopeful endurance, I think it fares best in the end with the hearts that are only--broken. Mr. Haldane's will was very brief, though perfectly explicit and formal. Every one who had ever suffered from his temper or caprices found themselves over-paid beyond their wildest expectations. These legacies accepted, he left all that he possessed, without fetter or condition, to his nephew.