“Old Dub” (there was such a touching solemnity, a sacredness as it were, thrown around his undying grief, that the name seemed no longer to suit him, and died away speedily, as do the nicknames of children when age and wisdom renders their foolish _petits noms_ inappropriate and absurd), “old Dub” was never the same man again after he had seen the delicate limbs of his dead daughter laid out for her burial. It was a touching sight to witness, that of the gray hairs falling over the white closed eyelids of the corpse, while the scant tears of age wrung from a father’s agony fell slowly one by one upon poor Sophy’s marble forehead. At the foot of the bed Arthur, pale almost as the dead that lay in its dread immovability before him, stood with folded arms, and with ever and anon a strong shiver shaking him from head to foot. He felt (it is the nature of his sex and kind) a good deal for himself, even in those moments of deep grief and self-reproach; and certain questions _would_ intrude themselves on his mind which were out of place in the breast of a newly-made widower, and in the chamber of mourning. Would Mr. Duberly, who knew nothing at present of the share which he (Arthur) had in poor Sophy’s death,--would he be _very_ hard upon him if, which was only too probable, he should come to know the truth? Would he believe in Arthur’s assurances, on his oath, that John Beacham’s visit had been the act of a madman, an act unjustified by any conduct, any intentions on Arthur’s part to injure or to wrong him? That the old man, sorrowing with a grief which would not be comforted, and lamenting over his lost treasure with “groanings that could not be uttered,” would not so believe, Arthur more than suspected. Well did he remember the jealous watchfulness, the unceasing solicitude, with which this doting father had striven to guard his child from even a transient sorrow; and it was not difficult to imagine the fury that would rage within his breast when the truth should be revealed to him that Arthur was, as Kate Vavasour had in her agony of fear and love exclaimed, his daughter’s murderer!