The old dowager had received no intimation before of the startling news. The Chef had undoubtedly forwarded a communication to the _veuve_ bereaved; but, addressed as it was _au sud de l'Angleterre_, it would take some weeks for it to reach The Poplars, if it ever got there. Mr Trump waited in vain for some time for what the old lady would say, glancing over the depositions, which Clara Kingscott had had translated for his benefit. At last the dowager spoke. "Go! Go!" she screamed out in a shrill, unearthly voice. "Pursue him! The murderer! The villain! The swindling rogue!" As Mr Trump looked at her in amazement her face became of a blue and livid colour. "I--I will go too! Get my--" The blue colour had now turned to black, and the old lady seemed to draw herself up as she exclaimed in disjointed sentences. "Get my--Susan!--Husband!--Where am I!" And with a still shriller shriek she fell forward on her face on the floor. "Apoplexy, my dear sir," as Mr Trump said afterwards in detailing the circumstance to a _confrere_. "Apoplexy, my dear sir! It often happens to people like her from a sudden shock!" But he was wrong, it was a more insidious if not so fatal a disease--it was paralysis, the fell enemy of muscularity. The lawyer at once sent for a doctor; and "Garge," the messenger despatched, went to Bigton for Doctor Jolly, as he was the only medical man recognised in the country round. But our old friend was not at home, he had not returned yet from his unusual absence abroad; and Dobbins, the whilom coal merchant, who was acting in his stead, shortly came to see the dowager. After a hasty inspection he saw what was the case, and telling Mr Trump that further assistance would be required, the lawyer telegraphed up to London for the great doctor, Stephanos Jenner, who arrived in the evening. This great authority confirmed the opinion of the lesser medical light. He said, after a preliminary "Ha! Hum!" that the treatment of the patient was everything that could be desired; and, accepting a fee of fifty guineas, which Mr Trump presented him by cheque, went off again to London after a few minutes' consultation, leaving the dowager in the hands of Dobbins, who, to do him justice, knew what he was about; and of Mr Trump, who hardly knew what to do. The lawyer was puzzled at the first; but his logical mind, keen to action, comprehended the situation, and prepared to act. He could not help moralising for a moment, however, on the vanity of human wishes, and the truthfulness of the proverb which tells us that "_L'homme propose mais le bon Dieu dispose_." The dowager had not been "going to die yet;" she had been ready to do anything and everything, and derided the idea of death and sickness; but here she was struck down in all her strength, and lying stretched out there a senseless lump of humanity without either the power or even the will to do anything. _Tali sunt solicitae vitae_!