If he had known what that something prefigured, if God had only for one moment given him prescience that night, the man's memory might have failed to hold something which shall never depart from him now till life is extinguished with it. As it was he exclaimed, "I would to Heaven, Dolly, I had passed all my life with you and Archie. I should in that case have been as unmercenary and unselfish as you." "Rather," said Dolly sententiously, "you should thank Heaven for having placed you in one of this world's strictest schools. Otherwise you might have been a simpleton like myself, or a clever idiot like dear Archie, but you would never have been a man who shall make his way to success as you intend to do." "How shall I make my way to success?" he inquired. "I do not quite like to say out my thought," she replied. "It is Sunday night, and what I feel may seem profane when rendered into speech. Nevertheless, Rupert, Providence does take care of men like you. I cannot at all tell why, since I know you are no better, indeed a great deal worse than myself. You will get on, never fear; just as if the vision were realized, I can see you now in a fine place, with a rich wife." "Stay," interrupted Rupert; "wherein this vision comes the skeleton?" "To my imagination," she answered, "the skeleton ceases not by day or night; it is ever present,--it is Homewood with you and your sister, prosperous in your plans, and my husband, who sheltered you--dying." "How you talk, Dolly? Archie is no worse." "Is he not?" she replied. "If things do not soon change here, the whole question will be settled in the simplest manner possible. He will die, and there will be a funeral, and people will say, "'Poor fellow! he held out as long as he could, and died just in the nick of time.'" "I know one man, at any rate, who would say nothing of the kind," remarked Rupert, "who would be quite certain to observe, 'Have you heard about that fellow Mortomley? No. Well, he has taken it into his head to die, and left me in the lurch. And after all my kindness to him too. I declare, sir, if that man had been my brother, I could not have done more for him--but there, that is just the return I meet with from, every one.'" The imitation was so admirable, and the words so exactly similar to those she had heard used, that Dolly could not choose but laugh. Then she stopped suddenly and said, "It is no laughing matter though." "What makes you think Archie is worse?" asked her companion.