'Novels have turned your head, Alison,' said Sir Ranald, in a low voice. 'You expect to be over head and ears--of a necessity--in love with a hero; well,' he added, through his set teeth, 'this fellow Goring is not one--didn't he shirk the Ashanti affair?' 'Oh, papa, how cruel and unjust of you! He won three medals, and was twice wounded in India.' 'Ah! you know all that?' 'He was "detailed" for the depôt, as it is called--so Archie told me--and had to remain at home.' 'Ah! you know all that too!' exclaimed her father, weakly, but in a sneering tone. Why did not Bevil attempt to seek her out? she thought. Had a change come over his mind and his plans? and was she left in loneliness to dream over the unattainable? 'It is not medals I would have you to set store upon, but money.' 'I care little about it, papa, and shiver at the name of it.' 'Perhaps so; but we ought to care for what money gets us.' 'Should I accept Lord Cadbury with your permission if he were a poor man?' 'Certainly not,' he replied, snappishly; 'even a poor Lord would be no mate for Miss Cheyne of Essilmont--for my daughter!' 'But if she is poor too?' 'Then the greater madness to think of it. But I am weary of this subject.' 'So indeed am I, papa.' 'And I am weary of life too--oh, so weary--but for you, bird Ailie! Ring for Archie--and--and let me to bed--to bed.' So he went to his bed that night, and never rose from it, for he was dying--dying partly of a general decay of the whole vital system; for he was a man who had lived high, and with whom life, if easy in one way, had been a species of feverish chase in another. In anxious monotony passed the nights and days. Dr. Kneebone, the Esculapius of Chilcote village, could do nothing for him now; indeed, there seemed nothing to be done but to watch for the end; and as Alison watched, with a heart torn by anxiety, passionate filial regard, and terror of what must inevitably come, again her sweet face, the softness and delicacy of which the pencil of a Greuze alone could have pourtrayed, became sad and pale and livid. Her eyes grew heavy and inflamed by much sleeplessness, and over all her bearing there spread a soft air of patient suffering with equal evidence of great resolution and fortitude; and yet--yet, withal, with a shudder in her heart, times there were when she began to think of sacrificing herself, if doing so could save her father and prolong his days. And old Archie Auchindoir moaned to himself as he pottered about his daily work, and often he muttered anxiously: 'It's no for nocht the gleds whustle at nicht!' Dying--Dr. Kneebone assured Lord Cadbury that the old man was certainly dying, and fully stronger than ever grew the hopes of the peer to possess Alison, the poor and forlorn, beautiful and hunted creature, in the midst of her coming desolation and loneliness. Genuine pity or commiseration he had none.