Nobody cared twopence about his death. It gave the shop-people something to talk about until customers dropped in, and then it was, “What’s the next article?” and Conway was forgotten. When a bubble explodes upon the surface of a stream, nothing mourns. The tide rolls on just the same, with sunshine or darkness in its breast, as the case may be; the pikes lose no jot of their voracity, and gudgeons swim into their maws; the minnows jump at the flies. Shall law, commerce, or anything else stop because a drunkard is drowned? Cover him up; let him hide his face until the pale jury come to take a peep; then pop him out of sight in a hole, and get back as fast as we may to dinner. But there were two persons on whose destiny this man’s death was to exercise an influence as wonderful, and gracious, and beneficial, as though, instead of a dead drunkard, he was a good spirit--an angel charged with a mission of love, sent by God Himself to work out and complete the happiness of the man who had been heavily tried, but who, in his bitterest trial, had never been found wanting. And I truly think that for such men--men who in their sorrow reverentially bow their heads and say, “God knows, I believe in Him; He shall lead me as a little child”--who murmur not, but, praising their Heavenly Father always, make their actions a profound heroism by obeying His voice in all seasons, not more faithfully in moments of joy than in moments of anguish--for such men we shall seldom err in prophesying a time in their lives when the heat of the day shall be shaded from them, and their burden and their conflict removed. “O man, greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end; for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of thy days.” Dolly had asked to be left alone with her child. Deeming Holdsworth a stranger, she had felt the restraint of his presence upon her, deeply as she was moved by his goodness. Her heart ached: misery had mastered her. The mere sense of having found a friend in this her time of piteous need could not suffice her. More was imperative: communion with God, communion with the husband who, she believed, looked down upon her from Heaven. To no mortal eyes could she lay bare the exquisite grief that lacerated her heart; and though she should find no comfort even in the Heaven she turned to, yet her full and poignant misery demanded escape in words and tears, and she asked to be left alone. Holdsworth entered the room facing his own apartment. This was Mrs. Parrot’s drawing-room. Here she had a piano; here she had some wonderful stuffed birds under glass shades; here she herself sat on Sundays with her mother, when her house was unoccupied.