"There would be a hardship to me in your waiting longer now. You are quite right in saying I have a sudden reason; this time last night I had no special thought of hurrying on Charlotte's marriage. Her uncle proposed it; I considered his reasoning good--so good, that I gave Charlotte permission this morning to fix with you the time for the wedding. But even then delay would have troubled me but little; now it does; now even these four short months trouble me sorely." "Why?" asked Hinton. "Why? You mentioned my health, and observed that I looked ill; I said I would come to that presently. I am ill; I look very ill. I have seen physicians. To-day I went to see Sir George Anderson; he told me, without any preamble, the truth. My dear fellow, I want you to be my child's protector in a time of trouble, for I am a dying man." Hinton had never come face to face with death in his life before. He started forward now and clasped his hands. "Dying!" he repeated, in a tone of unbelief and consternation. "Yes; you don't see it, for I am going about. I shall go about much as usual to the very last. Your idea of dying men is that they stay in bed and get weak, and have a living death long before the last great mercy comes. That will not be my case. I shall be as you see me now to the very last moment; then some day, or perhaps some night, you will come into this room, or into another room, it does not a bit matter where, and find me dead." "And must this come soon?" repeated Hinton. "It may not come for some months; it may stay away for a year; but again it may come to-night or to-morrow." "Good God!" repeated Hinton. "Yes, Mr. Hinton, you are right, in the contemplation of such a solemn and terrible event, to mention the name of your Creator. He is a good God, but His very goodness makes Him terrible. He is a God who will see justice done; who will by no means cleanse the guilty. I am going into His presence--a sinful old man. Well, I bow to His decree. But enough of this; you see my reasons for wishing for an early marriage for my child." "Mr. Harman, I am deeply, deeply pained and shocked. May I know the nature of your malady?" "It is unnecessary to discuss it, and does no good; suffice it to know that I carry a disease within me which by its very nature must end both soon and suddenly; also that there is no cure for the disease." "Are you telling me all this as a secret?" "As a most solemn and sacred secret. My brother suspects something of it, but no one, no one in all the world knows the full and solemn truth but yourself." "Then Charlotte is not to be told?" "Charlotte! Charlotte! It is for her sake I have confided to you all this, that you may guard her from such a knowledge."