At this point the reader burst into an irrepressible chuckle of delight, and as he closed the Magazine exclaimed, “Capital! capital!” to the no small amazement of the sufferer. Her lengthened silence of surprise made Bardon,—whose hand was now on the supplement of the _Times_, aware that it was necessary to say something; and as he had a vague idea that her talk had been a series of complaints, he cried, hap-hazard, as his eye ran on the list of deaths, “Very bad! very bad! I’m certain that you indulge in green tea!”— “Oh! well, I sometimes—” “Can it be!” muttered Bardon, gazing with stern interest at one of the names which appeared in the gloomy column. “Do you think, doctor, that there is much harm?” “Death!” exclaimed Timon Bardon to himself. “Surely you don’t mean it,”—cried the old lady, and the doctor was again recalled by her voice to what was passing around him. “If you drink green tea,” he cried, starting from his seat and pushing the paper to the other end of the table, “I won’t answer for your living out the year!” and with a very brief good-bye, Timon hurried away, leaving the poor lady to complain to her next visitor, that Dr. Bardon was so brusque and so odd that he was just like an east wind in March, and that she was not in the least surprised that his practice was not extensive, as if he did not kill his patients with his medicine, he was likely to do so with his manner! What was it that Bardon had seen in the _Times_ that interested him as strongly as even the article written by Annabella at his own suggestion? He had seen the announcement of the death of “Mr. Auger, of —— Street and Nettleby Tower,” of the man who had ruined his prospects—who had wrested from the disinherited son the estate which his ancestors for centuries had held. Death should still the emotion of hatred, hush the voice of revenge; but it is to be feared that in this instance the advertisement, casually seen, rather increased than diminished the stern satisfaction felt by the vindictive old man. It seemed to Bardon as if he were triumphing at once over a dead and a living foe. As he proceeded on his long walk homewards, he certainly never questioned himself as to his lack of the charity which _rejoiceth not in iniquity_, or he would not have revelled as he did in the idea that it was he who had incited the countess to take such petty revenge on her husband. Nor did Bardon, as he reflected on the death of his hated supplanter, recall to mind the warning of the royal Preacher, _Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thy heart be glad when he stumbleth_, or he would scarcely have muttered to himself with a gloomy smile, that six feet of earth would be now estate large enough for the late owner of Nettleby Tower.