“Ah!” said the doctor, and there was a world of emphasis on the monosyllable. “Well, I shan’t be detained here over half an hour longer, and I shall come straight up.” He reached there within half an hour after George. Mary saw him approaching and came into the hall to meet him. She was looking very sad and pale. “Another attack, I hear,” began the doctor, in his unceremonious mode of salutation, “bothered into it, I suppose; George says it came on while he was reading letters.” “Yes,” answered Mary, in acquiescence, her tone a resentful one. “It was brought on by overwork.” The doctor gave a groan as he turned towards the stairs. “Not there,” interposed Mary, “he is in the dining-room.” With the wan, white look upon his face, with the moisture of pain on his brow lay Charles Taylor. He was on the sofa now, but he partially rose from it and assumed a sitting posture when the doctor entered. A few professional questions and answers and then the doctor began to scold. “Did I not warn you that you must have perfect tranquility,” cried he, “rest of body and of mind?” “You did, but how am I to get it, even now I ought to be at the office. I shall die however it may be, doctor,” was the reply of Charles Taylor. “So will most of us, I expect,” returned the doctor, “but there’s no necessity for us to be helped on to it ages before death would come of itself.” “True,” replied Charles, but his tone was not a hopeful one. There was a pause, Charles broke it. “I wish you could give me something to avert these sharp attacks of pain, doctor, it is agony in fact, not pain.” “I know it,” replied the doctor. “What’s the use of my attempting to give you anything? You don’t take my prescription.” Charles lifted his eyes in surprise. “I have taken all that you desired me.” “No, you have not; I prescribe tranquillity of mind and body; you take neither.” Charles leaned nearer to the doctor and paused before he answered. “Tranquillity of mind for me has passed, I can never know it again; were my life to be prolonged by the great healer of all things, time might bring it to me in a degree, but for that I shall not live, doctor; you must know this to be the case under the calamity which has fallen upon my head.” “At any rate you cannot go on facing business any longer.” “I must, indeed, there is no help for it.” “And suppose it kills you,” was the retort. “If I could help going I would,” said Charles. “George has gone away.” The doctor arose and departed after giving Charles a severe lecture. Miss Taylor sat at one of the west windows, her cheek rested pensively on her fingers as she thought, oh, with what bitterness of the grievous past she sat there losing herself in regret after regret. If my father and mother had not died; she lost herself, I say, in these regrets, bitter as they were vain. How many of these useless regrets might embitter the lives of us all, how many do embitter them? If I had but done so and so; if I had taken