All the appalling paraphernalia of his cruel art had long since been handed over to an aspiring young dentist, together with the respectable house in Fitzgeorge-street, the furniture, and--the connexion.

And thus had ended Philip Sheldon's career as a surgeon-dentist.

Within a year of Tom Halliday's death his disconsolate widow had given her hand to her first sweetheart, not forgetful of her dead husband or ungrateful for much kindness and affection experienced at his hands, but yielding rather to Philip's suit because she was unable to advance any fair show of reason whereby she might reject him.
"I told you, she'd be afraid to refuse you," said George Sheldon, when the dentist came home from Barlingford, where Tom Halliday's widow was living with her mother.
Philip had answered his brother's questions rather ambiguously at first, but in the end had been fain to confess that he had asked Mrs.
Halliday to marry him, and that his suit had prospered.
"That way of putting it is not very complimentary to me," he said, drawing himself up rather stiffly.

"Georgy and I were attached to each other long ago, and it is scarcely strange if----" "If you should make a match of it, Tom being gone.

Poor old Tom! He and I were such cronies.