It was not until after the funeral that Wilmot experienced the full effect of the blow, experienced it in the dead dull blankness which seemed for the second time to have fallen upon his life. He had had something of the kind before, but nothing equal in intensity to what he now suffered. He felt as though the light had died out, and that henceforward he was to walk in darkness, without care, without hope, without interest in any mortal thing. Previously he had found some relief in hard study; now he found it impossible to fix his attention on his hooks. The awful sense of something impending was perpetually upon him; the more awful sense of something wanting in his life never left him. The only time that a ray of comfort broke in upon him was when Ronald Kilsyth would come and sit with him, and they would talk of the dead girl for hours together, as Madeleine had predicted they would do. They are very much together now, these two men; Ronald has risen in the service, and he and Wilmot are engaged in ameliorating the condition of the common soldiers and their families, It was a work in which Madeleine at one time took much interest; and this was sufficient to recommend it to Wilmot, who at once took it up. He is a middle-aged man now, with a grizzled head and a worn grave face. He has wealth and fame, and might have any position; but the world can offer him nothing that arouses in him the slightest interest, unless it be associated with the memory of his lost love. THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's The Forlorn Hope (Vol. 2 of 2), by Edmund Yates