The surgeon shook his head and answered in a quiet tone, looking down at the stopper of a phial, which he had taken up and was turning about listlessly in his fingers. "Neither care nor skill could save her. I gave her the best I had to give. As did Dr. Beale. Godolphin,"--raising his quick dark eyes, flashing then with a peculiar light--"she was ready to go. Let it be your consolation." Thomas Godolphin made no answer, and there was silence for a time. Mr. Snow resumed. "As to my lady, the best consolation I wish her, is, that she may have her heart wrung with remembrance for years to come! I don't care what people may preach about charity and forgiveness; I do wish it. But she'll be brought to her senses, unless I am mistaken: she has lost her treasure and kept her bane. A year or two more, and that's what Sarah Anne will be." "She ought to have written for me." "She ought to do many things that she does not do. She ought to have sent Ethel from the house, as I told her, the instant the disorder appeared in it. Not she. She kept her in her insane selfishness: and now I hope she's satisfied with her work. When alarming symptoms showed themselves in Ethel, on the fourth day of her illness, I think it was, I said to my lady, 'It is strange what can be keeping Mr. Godolphin!' 'Oh,' said she, 'I did not write to him.' 'Not write!' I answered: and I fear I used an ugly word to my lady's face. 'I'll write at once,' returned she humbly. 'Of course,' cried I, 'when the steed's stolen we shut the stable-door.' It's the way of the world." Another pause. "I would have given anything to take Ethel from the house at the time; to take her from the town," observed Thomas Godolphin in a low tone. "I said so then. But it could not be." "I should have done it, in your place," said Mr. Snow. "If my lady had said no, I'd have carried her off in the face of it. Not married, you say? Rubbish! Every one knows she'd have been safe with you. And you would have been married as soon as was convenient. What are forms and ceremonies and carping tongues, in comparison with a girl's life? A life, precious as was Ethel's!" Thomas Godolphin leaned his forehead in his hand, lost in retrospect. Oh, that he _had_ taken her! that he had set at nought what he had then bowed to, the _convenances_ of society! She might have been by his side now, in health and life, to bless him! Doubting words interrupted the train of thought. "And yet I don't know," the surgeon was repeating, in a dreamy manner. "What is to be, will be. We look back, all of us, and say, 'If I had acted thus, if I had done the other, so and so would not have happened; events would have turned out differently.' But who is to be sure of it? Had you taken Ethel out of harm's way--as we might have thought it--there's no telling but she'd have had the fever just the same: her blood might have become infected before she left the house. There's no knowing, Mr. Godolphin." "True. Good evening, Snow."