He pushed Hal towards him, adding-- “Here is the proper person.” Mr. Wilton, almost insensible, sank on to the breast of Harry Vivian. CHAPTER XV.--“COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE.” If this austere, unsociable life Change not your offer made in heat of blood; If frosts and fasts, hard lodging, and thin weeds, Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love, But that it bears this trial, and last love; Then, at the expiration of the year, Come challenge me. --Shakspere. The deadly faintness which had overcome Old Wilton, when he fell into the arms of Harry Vivian, increased, until it deprived him of all consciousness of what was passing around him. Alarmed by an unusual disturbance in the house, both Mark and Flora hastened to the library in time to witness a scene to them incomprehensible. Mr. Riversdale was struggling in the arms of an officer; Nathan Gomer was, as usual, unexpectedly present, giving instructions to a servant; Lester Vane had disappeared; and, oh! strangest sight of all, their father was leaning on the breast of Hal Vivian. Yet an instant, and the whole scene was changed as at the stroke of a magician’s wand. Riversdale, officer, Nathan Gomer, and the servant, had disappeared from the room at one moment, and Hal Vivian was alone left to explain. Both hurriedly inquired of him what had happened; but he tenderly placed old Wilton in his library chair, and begged for some restoratives on the instant, for it was painfully apparent that the old man was in a swoon. Flora hastened to obtain them, while Mark, in compliance with suggestions rapidly made by Hal, descended to the garden. Upon Flora’s return, she, assisted by Vivian, applied some ammoniacal salts to her father’s nostrils, and bathed his temples with eau-de-cologne and water. In a short time the application proved successful; Wilton recovered sufficiently to gaze vacantly around him and utter a few incoherent remarks. Flora twined her arms about his neck, and, with fond words and soothing tenderness, succeeded in calming down the violent perturbation which succeeded the recovery from his swoon. Then he gazed, almost wildly, round him in search of the actors in the scene which had perfectly electrified and overwhelmed him. They were gone. The old man gave an involuntary groan, accompanied by a sudden shudder, then he asked-- “Where is Nathan Gomer?” “Mark has just quitted the library to seek an interview with him,” replied Flora. “He will return with him, I have no doubt.” “No, no,” said Wilton, soliloquizing. “He will come back no more--no more! From afar he will contemplate the destruction of hopes he assisted to raise, only the more completely to hurl them to the dust.”