Then, after another pause, as if he had expected some remark from Kate. "It is odd Egerton should send it without a line; I cannot make it out; only that letters seldom miscarry, I should say he had written a despatch himself, independent of the other; but pooh, that is highly improbable. Has Mrs. O'Toole replied to her son's epistle?" "Yes, that is I acted as her secretary, last week; when do you think the letter will reach Dennis?" "Oh, heaven knows, they are up the country, and, I fancy, not very settled; perhaps in two or three months." Kate sighed. "Hey! Miss Vernon, what was that sigh for?" "Oh, I was thinking of last Christmas, we were a very pleasant party, though poor Captain, I mean Major Egerton, was so terribly in the blues about leaving England; and now how different everything is! how silently and gradually a great gulf has been opened between the past and the present!" "Well, well, it is melancholy enough, not to be either a pleasant or a profitable subject of cogitation. Forward, forward, as your favourite, Longfellow, says, 'Let the dead past, bury it's dead, Act, act, in the living present, Heart within, and God o'er head!'" "A word in season, how good it is!" returned Miss Vernon, smiling pensively. "Well, here we are, I wonder what Mrs. Winter will say to your powers of persuasion?" "She will be delighted--she dreads the journey." "Pooh, not she; as long as I am with her, she thinks all must go well." "A pattern wife!" sighed Kate. "Yes; no wife can be happy if she does not feel this. Ah, Kate, Kate, I wish you had a good husband!" "Like yourself! eh, Mr. Winter! but alas!" "Now, no quizzing, if you please! I'm glad we are at the end of our _trajet_, if you are going to laugh at me." The gradually silent change in the Colonel's health and spirits, which had escaped the every-day watchfulness of even Kate's tender guardianship, struck Winter, whose perception was quickened by the, to him, unshaded transition from light to gloom, caused by the cessation of their daily intercourse, with grief and dismay; nor did he rest until he had persuaded his venerated friend to accompany him to an eminent physician, though the Colonel protested, he had not a single symptom of which he could reasonably complain. The doctor felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, and tried his lungs, asked a good many questions, seemingly irrelevant, as to his spirits, &c., wrote a short prescription, recommended horse exercise, took his fee, and bowed them out. Winter looked dissatisfied; and as he handed the Colonel into the cab, which was waiting for them, suddenly recollected he had forgotten his snuff-box, he returned to the room, but in vain, for the bland physician merely repeated--"Nothing physical, I assure you, sir--mental depression--imaginative disorder."