Mrs. Dundyke made no rejoinder. For herself, she had never fully believed in the marriage at all, but she was not cruel enough to say so. She sat watching him over her knitting: now bending forward with his thin hands spread out to the warmth of the fire; now suddenly bringing his hands to his chest as he coughed, choked; now lying back in the chair, panting, his thin nostrils working, his breath coming in great gasps; and there came in that moment over Mrs. Dundyke as she looked, a conviction--she knew not whence or why--that a very, very short period would bring the end. She felt her face grow moist with a cold moisture. How was it that she had been so blind to the obvious truth? She knitted two whole rows of knitting before she spoke, and then she told him, with a calm voice, that she should write for his wife. "How kind you are!" he murmured. "I shall never repay you." Mrs. Dundyke laughed cheerfully. "I don't want repayment. There is nothing to repay." "Nothing to repay! No kindly friendship, no trouble, no cost! I wonder how much I cost you in wine alone?" "Robert," she said, in a low, earnest tone--though she wondered whether he might not be jesting--"do you know what they tell me my future income will be? Mr. Littelby was here to-day, giving me an account of things, for I put my poor husband's affairs into his hands on my return. It will not be much less than two thousand a year." The amount of the sum quite startled him. "Two thousand a year!" "It will indeed, as they tell me. By the articles of partnership I am allowed a handsome income from the house in Fenchurch-street; but the chief of the money comes from speculations my husband has been engaged in for many years, in connexion with a firm on the Stock Exchange. Safe speculations, and profitable; not hazardous ones. This money is realized, and put out in the Funds, in what they call the Five-per-Cents.; and I shall have nearly two thousand a year. I had no idea of it; and the puzzle to me now is, how I shall spend it. Don't you think I require a few kind visitors to help me?" Before he could answer, there came on a violent fit of coughing, worse than any she had yet seen, and quite a little stream of blood trickled from his mouth. It was nothing particularly new, but that night Mrs. Carr was written for in haste. "Tell her to bring the desk with her," said Robert; and Mrs. Dundyke wrote down the words just as he spoke them.