It was a sore home-thrust this dealing with the Meter shares; but not the worst blow of all. Certain bill transactions, in which something very nearly akin to forgery had been committed, were disclosed, and Richard Tallant appeared to be a designing sharper of the first class,--one of the leading Stock Exchange conspirators, through whose arts so many concerns had been brought to ruin, and from which disasters the conspirators had reaped great golden harvests. The merchant was a just man, and he would have every possible proof of his son’s dishonour before he wiped him out for ever. He had ample proof, and he wiped him out accordingly. On the second night after Mrs. Somerton’s confession the lawyer and his clerk returned to London, and the merchant, having sent to inquire after the bailiff’s wife, who continued dangerously ill, took a light supper, retired to his bedroom, and dismissed his man for the night. He took with him the vignette of which Mrs. Somerton had spoken; he pulled an arm-chair towards the fire, and sat gazing at the picture long after everybody was a-bed. He sat there when the last embers in the grate had faded out, and he sat there when the sun rose the next morning--sat there with the picture at his feet--sat there with the red sunlight streaming through the blind, and through apertures in the door of the adjoining room; he sat there with his head upon his breast, his hands hanging down, and with his eyes wide open; but he had been dead for several hours when daylight looked in upon his corpse. The sunshine was streaming in upon him, we say, and it was so; for on that morning the sun had risen with unusual splendour. The east was all ablaze with crimson and golden hues, and from its gorgeous throne the sun shone forth as if with a burning glowing sense of its own grandeur. Troops of radiant beams, bearing commissions from the mighty king of day, gleamed above “the high-raised clouds,” dispersed “the morning fogs,” flung wreaths of sunny beauty upon the mantling hills, and glimmered in golden glittering sheen upon the windows of Barton Hall. Not upon the windows only did the sunbeams fall, we say, but they penetrated the darkened rooms and fell upon the dead man; and here they played softly upon his whitened hair, and stole about the room as if they sought for somebody whom he loved that they might bring them to his side. Through every cleft and crevice the morning sunbeams streamed; a thousand motes sprang up and danced in the columns of light, as if they mocked the grave; and a reflection from the merchant’s watch-seals trembled like an active eye upon the wall.