Only for a few days, however. With the exception of Sarah, who was too deeply engrossed in her work to care much for passing pleasures, the entire family seemed to have caught a fever of restlessness and love of excitement. After ten days the bride and bridegroom returned, and there were great parties to welcome them. Every day there seemed some reason why they should launch out a little further, and yet a little further, and instead of the family being less expensive now that two daughters were married, the general expenditure was far more lavish than it had ever been before. They had a second man-servant and another maid, and then they found that it was impossible to get on any longer without a second "broom" horse for night-work. They did, indeed, begin to talk about leaving Jesamond Road, and going into a larger house. The boys--Tom was just seventeen, and Johnnie only fifteen--wanted a billiard-room, and Minnie wanted a boudoir, and Mr. Stubbs wanted a larger study, and Mrs. Stubbs wanted a double hall. That change, however, was never made, although Mrs. Stubbs and Minnie had seen and set their hearts upon a mansion in Earl’s Court at a modest rental of five hundred a year, which they thought quite a reasonable rent--for one awful night the senior clerk came tearing up to the door in a cab, with the horse all in a lather and his own face like chalk, and asked for the master. [Illustration: And asked for the master.] The master and mistress were just going out to a great dinner-party at the house of Mrs. Giath, their eldest daughter, in Palace Gardens, but Mr. Stubbs came down and saw him in the study. They were shut up there together for some time, until Mrs. Stubbs grew impatient, and knocked several times at the door, with a reminder that they would be very late, and that May would not like to be kept waiting. And at last Mr. Stubbs opened the door and came out. "Get my coat, James," he said to the servant; then, as he buttoned it, added, "Mr. Senior will have a glass of wine and a biscuit before he goes. Good-night, Senior. See you in the morning." "Lor, Pa!" exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs, as they rolled away from the door, "I thought something was the matter." "No, my dear, only some important business Senior thought I ought to know about," he answered; and Mr. Stubbs that evening was the very light and life of his daughter’s party. But in the morning the crash came! Not that he was there to see it, though; for just as they reached home again, and he passed into his own house, Mr. Stubbs reeled and fell to the ground in all the hideousness of a severe paralytic seizure. Nor did he ever, even partially, recover his senses; before the day was done he had gone out of the sea of trouble which overwhelmed him, to answer for his doings before a high and just tribunal, which, let us hope, would give him a more merciful judgment than he would have found in this world.