“She never kissed me again; she never called her ‘Will’ again; she never _knew_ me again,” Colonel Mapleson went on, in a hollow tone, “for she took a cold that very day and was raving with delirium when I returned. She grew worse and worse, and in two weeks was—dead. My bright, beautiful wife, whom I loved better than my own life, for whom I was willing to give up fortune, position, _everything_ that I had hitherto held most dear, lay a lifeless thing of clay—gone from me like a breath, leaving me broken-hearted and with my reason nearly dethroned.” It was truly pitiable to witness the man’s emotion and his struggle for self-control. His frame shook like a tree swayed by the wind; his lips and his voice trembled so that it was difficult for him to articulate, while his broad chest heaved convulsively with the anguished throbbing of his heart. “Well,” he said, after a while, “I must not dwell upon that sad time, and I scarcely know how I lived during the week that followed. We buried her in a quiet spot beneath a mammoth tree, not a stone’s throw from our home, where she used often to sit on a warm summer’s day with some dainty bit of work in her hands. You have seen her grave, you say,” he interposed, turning to Geoffrey. “Does it look sadly neglected and overgrown? Is the stone defaced or the name obliterated by the storms of so many years?” “No, sir,” his son answered, looking up with moist eyes, for he had been deeply moved by his father’s story and his evident suffering in telling it; “the fence that surrounds the little lot has fallen somewhat to decay, but a luxuriant growth of vines hides all that. The stone still stands upright in its place and the name ‘Annie’ is as distinct to-day as it ever was.”