The first ocean-going steamer bound for a distant port should convey him--no matter whither it was destined. A selfish, inexorable parent, a too-scrupulous love, he would leave behind him for ever; and in some wild, exciting service, under the flag of a nation on the other side of the globe, he resolved to endeavour to forget the cause of his present unhappiness. In the heat of his wrath, against his parent especially, he encountered Charles Clinton, and from him learned that his father had been struck down by the bullet of an assassin, and, for all that was at the moment known, lay at the point of death. The natural impulse of a generous and affectionate heart effected an instant revulsion of feeling, and the ocean-going steamer was at once abandoned for the train to Harleydale. Before the night closed in he was, with an able surgeon, at his father’s bedside. As he gazed upon the old man’s ashy face, his closed eyes, the furrowed wrinkles--traces of care and long suffering--all angry, rebellious animosity took wing; he knelt down by the couch, and, with falling tears, prayed earnestly for him against whom so few hours back his heart had been so fiercely moved. The surgeon, after a careful examination, reported that the wound received by old Wilton, though severe, was neither fatal nor in itself dangerous, but the shock it had occasioned to the system of an aged and feeble man was essentially the latter; in fact, the prostration it had produced rendered his condition highly critical. The surgeon plainly said that extraordinary care and unceasing tending and nursing could alone save him; and he impressed it upon Mark’s mind that failure in the nurse’s duties would be fatal to his father. It was necessary that Flora should be made acquainted with the directions of the surgeon; and Mark, surprised at not seeing her with her father, sent for her, believing that agony and fright had compelled her to retire to her chamber. He was astounded to learn that she was not in the house. That she had quitted the Hall in the morning, and had not returned; and though messengers had been despatched in every direction in search of her, she could not only not be found, but no tidings could be gained of her. This was a new blow to him. He felt distracted and bewildered; he could suggest to himself nothing to account for her absence but some frightful and fatal accident. He dare not leave his father’s side to search for her, and the people by whom he was attended or to whom he might apply appeared to have done all in their power, but in vain, to gain tidings of her. While racking his brain to devise a means of instantly instituting a fresh search for her, his father roused himself from his previous lethargic condition, and gazed feebly around him: as his dull eyes fell upon Mark they brightened up, a smile of affection passed over his ghastly features, and he pressed the hand with which Mark clasped his.