"There would be time," said Colonel Tempest to himself; and, not without a shuddering foreboding that his brother might die in his actual presence, without giving him time to bolt, he entered the sick-room, from which the doctor had beckoned the nurse, and closed the door. The room was full of light, for the dying man had been oppressed by the darkness in which he lay, and a vain attempt had been made to alleviate it by the flood of April sunshine which had been let into the room. Through the open window came the rapture of the birds. Mr. Tempest lay perfectly motionless with his eyes half closed. His worn face had a strong family resemblance to his brother's, with the beauty left out. "Jack!" said Colonel Tempest. Mr. Tempest heard from an immense distance, and came painfully back across long wastes and desert places of confused memories, came slowly back to the room, and the dim sunshine, and himself; and stopped short with a jarred sense as he saw his own long feeble hands laid upon the counterpane. He had forgotten them, though he recognized them now he saw them again. Why had he returned? "Jack," said the voice again. Mr. Tempest opened his eyes suddenly, and looked full at his brother--at the false, weak, handsome face of the man who had injured him. It all came back, the passion and the despair; the intolerable agony of jealousy and baffled love; and the deadly, deadly hatred. Fourteen years ago was it since Diana had been taken from him? It returned upon him as though it were yesterday. A light flamed up in the dying eyes before which Colonel Tempest quailed. All the sentences he had prepared beforehand seemed to fail him, as prepared sentences have a way of doing, being made to fit imaginary circumstances, and being consequently unsuited to any others. Mr. Tempest, who had not prepared anything, had the advantage. "Curse you," he said, in his low, difficult whisper. "You damned scoundrel!" Colonel Tempest was shocked. To bear a grudge after all these years! Jack had always been vindictive! And what an unchristian state of mind for one on the brink of that nightmare of horror, the grave! He was unable to articulate. "What are you here for?" said Mr. Tempest, after a pause. "Who let you in? Why can't I be allowed to die in peace?" "Oh, don't talk like that, Jack!" gasped Colonel Tempest, speaking extempore, after fumbling in all the empty pockets of his mind for something appropriate to say. "I am sure I am very sorry for----" A look warned him that even his tactful reference to a certain subject would be resented. "But, it's all past and gone now, and--it's a long time ago, and you're----" "Dying," suggested Mr. Tempest.