Can you come to-night_ ?' He put it down in stupefaction.

Marie ill! the doctors alarmed! Good heavens! could he catch that evening train?
He looked at his watch, decided that there was time, and plunged, with his servant's help, into all the necessary preparations.

An hour and a half later he was speeding along through the clear cold moonlight to Dover, realising for the first time, as he leant back alone in his compartment, the full meaning of the news which had hurried him off.

All his tender affection for his sister, and all his stifling sense of something unlucky and untoward in his own life, which had been so strong in him during the past two months, combined to rouse in him the blackest fears, the most hopeless despondency.

Marie dead,--what would the world hold for him! Books, thought, ideas--were they enough?
Could a man live by them if all else were gone?
For the first time Kendal felt a doubt which seemed to shake his nature to its depths.
During the journey his thoughts dwelt in a dull sore way upon the past.