The house looked the same, as houses will, happen what may. There was even a greater gaiety about the place. A windy autumn day, when the cloudlets sail joyously across the luminous blue sky, and the red and golden trees are shaken by the fresh breezes, has a liveliness of its own, as if Nature were at play after the hard work of the spring and summer before the night of winter sets in, when she herself falls asleep. And within these four walls? As Hugh alighted at the garden door, and walked in without ringing the bell (all bells had been muffled by the doctors’ orders), he did not think with any pleasurable anticipation of the possible scene within. But he miscalculated the influence of the young girl who was so soon to be left alone in the world. As he entered the hall by one door, Lilia came in by another. She looked pale and thinner in her clinging grey gown; but she was calm, and met him with a half-smile and clinging clasp of the hand. “You know?” she asked, in a hushed voice. “That he is doomed by the doctors, and that a letter and two telegrams were _not_ sent to me? Yes,” he said, dryly. “I trusted——” She hesitated, and looked round. “Explanations afterwards,” she added, with a hopeless, bitter meaning in her tones and manner. “Now we must only think of _him_. Will you have some refreshment, or see him now?” “Now, at once,” said Hugh. Then he followed her in silence up the old oaken staircase, wondering at her power of self-control—she, so sensitive and emotional a creature! Until now, she had drawn his sympathies by her gift of fascination; thus, she seized and held his respect. At a tap from Lilia, a nurse opened the door. “Mr. Paull,” whispered Lilia, gliding away. “I am thankful you have come,” said the nurse, who looked worn and harassed. “There are two of us, but he has been dreadful. You are a doctor. You will not let him over-excite himself? We are to leave you alone.” Hugh satisfied the nurse, as they stood by the door behind the screen. They whispered, but the hearing of the dying man was sharpened. “Who’s—that?” Hugh heard, in reedy, querulous tones he hardly recognised. “You must come at once,” said the nurse. Then her worn, anxious expression suddenly changed to the placid, cheerful smile that is as necessary an adjunct in the case of a sick-room attendant as in a _danseuse_ before the public. Hugh, following her, saw a yellowish-white face on the pillows of a big bed hung with dark green. The change was at hand. Sir Roderick’s aquiline features were pinched and shrunken; the great bluish circles round his dark eyes intensified the fixedness of his gaze; there was the heaviness of death in his arms, stretched motionless at his sides. “Hamlet!” he said, in a far-away voice, and his pallid lips drew aside in the faint mockery of a dying smile. “Come here—close. You two women, _go_.”