"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at last--to be near her." "Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to these serio-comic remonstrances. "I was truly sorry to leave town, on your account and on my father's. But my dear adopted sister is paramount with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread." Book the Eighth. A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. CHAPTER I. A DREAD REVELATION. The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men--one for the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save? This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely puzzled as to who that some one must be. The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked too hard for the possibility of friendship. The cultivation of the severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard and honest worker during the later reputable portion of his life. His friendships of the previous portion had been the friendships of the railway-carriage and the smoking room, the _cafe_ and the gaming-table. He could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply for counsel in this crisis of his life. There was George Sheldon, a man for whom he entertained a most profound contempt; Captain Paget, a man who might or might not be able to give him good advice, but who would inevitably sacrifice Charlotte Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if self-interest could be served by the recommendation of an incompetent adviser.