Brewster was coming forward to meet him, she was convulsed with grief, he took both her hands in his with a soothing gesture, essaying a word of comfort, not of inquiry why she should have brought him to this room, he glanced at the bed expecting to see the corpse upon it; but the bed was empty and at that moment his eyes caught another sight. Seated by the fire in an invalid chair surrounded by pillows covered with shawls, with a wan, attenuated face and eyes that seemed to have a glaze over them was--who? Mary Ann? It certainly was Mary Ann, in life yet, for she feebly held out her hand in welcome, and the tears suddenly gushed from her eyes, “I am getting better, Mr. Taylor.” Charles Taylor--how shall I write it, for one minute he was blind to what it could all mean, his whole mind was a chaos of astonished perplexity, and then when the dreadful truth burst upon him he staggered against the wall with a wailing cry of agony, it was Janey who had died. Charles Taylor leaned against the wall in his shock of agony; it was one of those moments that can come only once in a life-time, in many lives never, when the greatest of earthly misery bursts upon the startled spirit, shattering it for all time. Were Charles Taylor to live a hundred years he could never know another moment like this, the power so to feel would have left him. It had not left him yet; it had scarcely come to him in its full realization; at present he was half stunned. Strange as it may seem, the first impression upon his mind was that he was so much nearer the next world. How am I to define this nearness? It was not that he was nearer to it by time or in goodness; nothing of that. CHAPTER V. CHARLES TAYLOR’S REGRETS.