The dying man! Yes, the fiat had gone forth--he was dying. Ned Guyon, the _ci-devant jeune homme par excellence_, the trifler by vocation and profession, the man of all others with whom it was impossible to associate an idea of solemnity, the dandy in dress, the _roué_ in morals, the _persifleur_ in religion, the man in consideration of whom it would have been particularly pleasant to disembarrass the mind of belief in present and future accountability,--this man was dying. Not slowly, with time and opportunity for reflection, for repentance, for "setting his house in order;" but quickly, dumbly, as a stricken animal might die--as men die in whom the brain is killed first, and the machine has but a little while to labour on afterwards. His daughter saw it all, realised it all in a minute, even as she crossed the threshold of the room she had never entered since her wedding-day; and there mingled with the horror and anguish of the moment a sudden sense of recognition, and yet of strangeness, as she saw, without looking at them, in the inexplicable vividness of perception which comes in moments of strong emotion, the "soulless things" she had lived amongst for so long in the old life gone for ever. And here was another life going away for ever. She did not doubt it for one instant; and when the physician, who had known her from her girlhood, gravely took her hand, and whispered to her that there was no hope, the dying man lying insensible to any sight or sound, she shuddered strongly from head to foot, but she did not weep, or shrink from the touch or the voice.