Christian Vellacott turned away, and looked thoughtfully out of the window. “Well,” he said, after a pause, “so long as you do not suffer by it--” “Oh--h,” she gasped, as if he were whipping her. She did not quite know what he meant. She does not know now. At last he spoke again, slowly, deliberately, and without emotion. “Some day,” he said, “when you are older, when you have more experience of the world, you will probably fall into the habit of thanking God, in your prayers, that I am what I am. It is not because I am good ... perhaps it is because I am ambitious--my father, you may remember, was considered heartless; it may be _that_. But if I were different--if I were passionate instead of being what the world calls cold and calculating--you would be ... your life would be--” he stopped, and turning away he sat down wearily in Aunt Judy's armchair. “You will know some day!” he said. It is probable that she does know now. She knows, in all likelihood, that her husband would have been powerless to save her from Christian Vellacott--from herself--from that Love wherein there are no roses but only thorns. And in the room above them Aunt Hester was dying. So wags the world. There is no attention paid to the laws of dramatic effect upon the stage of life. The scenes are produced without sequence, without apparent rhyme or reason; and Chance, the scene-shifter, is very careless, for comedies are enacted amid scenic effects calculated to show off to perfection the deepest tragedy, while tragedies are spoilt by their surroundings. The doctor and Mrs. Carew stood at the bedside, and listened to the old woman's broken murmurings. Into her mind there had perhaps strayed a gleam of that Light which is not on the earth, for she was not abusing her great-nephew. “Ah, Christian,” she was murmuring, “I wish you would come. I want to thank you for your kindness, more especially to Aunt Judy. She is old, and we must make allowances. I know she is aggravating. It happened long ago, when your father was a little boy--but it altered her whole life. I think women are like that. There is something that only comes to them once. I am feeling far from well, nephew Vellacott. I think I should like to see a doctor. What does Aunt Judy think? Is she asleep?” She turned her head to where she expected to find her sister, and in the act of turning her eyes closed. She slumbered peacefully. The two sisters had slept together for seventy years--seventy long, monotonous years, in which there had been no incident, no great joy, no deep sorrow--years lost. Except for the natural growth and slow decay of their frames, they had remained stationary, while around them children had grown into men and women and had passed away.