Written by a dying hand, the letter addressed by Lord Caterham to Geoffrey Ludlow was read when the doctors would scarcely have pronounced its recipient out of the jaws of death. Gaunt, wan, hectic; with great bistre-rings round his big eyes, now more prominent than ever; with his shapely white hands now almost transparent in their thinness; with his bushy beard dashed here and there with gray patches; and with O such a sense of weariness and weakness,--old Geoff, stretched supine on his bed, demanded news of Margaret. They had none to give him: told him so--at first gently, then reiterated it plainly; but he would not believe it. They must know something of her movements; some one must have been there to tell him where she was; something must have been heard of her. To all these questions negative answers. Then, as his brain cleared and his strength increased--for, except under both of these conditions, such a question would not have occurred to him--he asked whether, during his illness, there had been any communication from Lord Beauport's house. A mystery then--a desire to leave it over, until Miss Maurice's next call, which happened the next day, when Caterham's letter, intact, was handed to him. That letter lay on a chair by Geoffrey's bedside the whole of that afternoon. To clutch it, to look at it, to hold it, with its seal yet unbroken, before his eyes, he had employed such relics of strength as remained to him; but he dared not open it. He felt that he could give no explanation of his feelings; but he felt that if he broke that seal, and read what was contained in that letter, all his recent tortures would return with tenfold virulence: the mocking demons that had sat on his bed and sneered at him; the fiery serpents that had uncoiled themselves between him and the easel on which stood the picture which urgent necessity compelled him to work at; the pale fair form, misty and uncertain generally, yet sometimes with Margaret's hair and eyes, that so constantly floated across his vision, and as constantly eluded his outstretched arms,--all these phantasms of his fevered brain would return again. And yet, in it, in that sheet of paper lying so temptingly near to his pillow, there was news of her! He had but to stretch out his hand, and he should learn how far, at least, her story was known to the relatives of him who---- The thought in itself was too much; and Geoffrey swooned off. When he recovered, his first thought was of the letter; his first look to assure himself that it had not been removed. No, there it lay I He could resist the temptation no longer; and, raising himself on his elbow, he opened and read it.