She was desired by the doctor to cease from exertion, to abstain from all household work, and to drink plenty of good wine, to procure which Greville Hampton deprived himself of many little things to which in his reduced position he had been accustomed--an occasional cigar, or a glass of cheap Marsala; and when he thought of the past, the strong man's tender and loving heart was wrung, when he heard her hacking cough, and he saw her seated, pale and feeble, her delicate hands unable to persevere even in sewing a little jacket for Derval that lay on the table before her. And now the kind curate, whose threadbare coat covered a noble heart, brought her many a bunch of luxurious grapes, and many a bottle of good wine--port of fabulous antiquity--which had been sent to himself from the Hall, the abode of the Squire, whom Greville had known in other days, but who now knew him not. To procure comforts for Mary, in his desperation he appealed to his remote kinsman, Lord Oakhampton; but the application was ignored--no answer ever came, and for some time black fury filled the heart of the proud and fiery, but powerless and impoverished man. Anon he thought, what other treatment could he expect? Did not Lord Oakhampton know well that in society, on every occasion, he, Greville Hampton, had denounced him as the usurper of his property and title--a denunciation the truth of which, legally, as yet, he could not prove? "Oh," he would exclaim, "for a little of the wealth I have wasted in the foolish past time--for Mary's sake--for Mary's sake!" How bitter it was to look back in the light of experience and think of what might be now, had he been wiser than he was! And his whole soul recoiled at the contemplation of the awful loneliness of life without her, if Mary were taken from him. Her fast failing health drew him from his usual selfish and useless repining over the past, or if he did so, it was for her sake alone now; for that she was failing and passing away from him day by day, became painfully apparent; a cough shook her delicate form, and again and again was her handkerchief soaked in blood. And he could only groan over the poverty that precluded all change of air, or scene, and the employment of greater medical skill than that possessed by the country practitioner. But no skill could have availed Mary; and the frail tenure of her life, despite all his love and anxiety, was only a thing of time. The consumption that was wasting her delicate form only served to make her beauty seem more tender, alluring, and pathetic to the eyes of her sorrow-stricken husband, to whom she said more than once, with her head reclined on his breast-- "If I am taken from you, Greville darling, I trust you will think of the past less regretfully, of the future more hopefully, and remember that we are, while here, but as 'little children playing with shells upon the shore of time.'"