to me that you have had the same before?” “Write a few words the first thing, will you, Mary; I do not like to keep them waiting for me.” Mary was as punctilious as Charles, and as considerate as he was for the convenience of others, and she sat down and wrote the note, dispatching it at once by Billy, another of the servants; few could have sat apart and done it as calmly as Mary, considering that she had a great thumping at her heart, a fear which had never penetrated it until this moment. Their mother’s sickness was similar to this, a sharp acute pain had occasionally attacked her, the symptom of the inward malady of which she had died. Was the same fatal malady attacking him? The doctors had expressed their fears then that it might be hereditary. In the hall, as Mary was going back to Charles’ room, the note having been written, she met George, the sad apprehensive look in the old man’s face struck her, she touched his arm and motioned him into another room. “What is it that is the matter with your master?” “I don’t know,” was the answer; but the words were spoken in a tone which caused Mary to think that the old man was awake to the same fears that she was. “Miss Mary, I am afraid to think what it may be.” “Is he often sick like this?” “I know but of a time or two ma’am, but that’s a time or two too many.” Mary entered his room, Charles was leaning back in his chair, his face ghastly, apparently prostrate from the effects of the pain; if a momentary thought had crossed her mind, that he might have written the note himself, it left her; now things were coming into her mind one by one, how much time he had spent in his room of late; how seldom, comparatively speaking, he went to his office; how often he called for the carriage, when he did go, instead of walking; only this last Sunday he had not gone near the church all day long, her fears grew into certainties. She took a chair, drawing it near to Charles, not speaking of her fears, but asking him in an agreeable tone how he felt, and what had caused his illness. “Have you had this pain before?” she continued, “Several times,” he answered, “but it has been worse to-night than I have previously felt it. Mary I fear it may be the warning of my call, I did not think that I would leave you so soon.” Except that Mary’s face turned nearly as pale as his and that her fingers entwined themselves together so tightly as to cause pain, there was no outward sign of the grief that laid hold of her heart. “Charles, what is the complaint you are fearing?” she asked after a pause, “The same that my mother had,” he quietly answered, speaking the words that Mary would not speak. “It may not be so,” gasped Mary. “True, but I think it is.” “Why have you never spoken of this?” “Because, until to-night, I have doubted whether it was so or not; the suspicion that it might be so, certainly was upon me, but it amounted to no more than a suspicion; at times when I feel quite well I argue that I must be wrong.”