first oculists of Europe had peered into and
tested his eyes, but all to no purpose. The sight had gone for ever.

Therefore, full of bitter regrets at being thus compelled to renounce
the stress and storm of political life which he loved so well, Sir Henry
Heyburn had gone into strict retirement at Glencardine, his beautiful
old Perthshire home, visiting London but very seldom.

He was essentially a man of mystery. Even in the days of his universal
popularity the source of his vast wealth was unknown. His father, the
tenth Baronet, had been sadly impoverished by the depreciation of
agricultural property in Lincolnshire, and had ended his days in the
genteel quietude of the Albany. But Sir Henry, without betraying to the
world his methods, had in fifteen years amassed a fortune which people
guessed must be considerably over a million sterling.

From a life of strenuous activity he had, in one single hour, been
doomed to one of loneliness and inactivity. His friends sympathised, as
indeed the whole British public had done; but in a month the tragic
affair and its attendant mysterious gossip had been forgotten, as in
truth had the very name of Sir Henry Heyburn, whom the Prime Minister,
though his political opponent, had one night designated in the House as
"one of the most brilliant and talented young men who has ever sat upon
the Opposition benches."

In his declining years the life of this man was a pitiful tragedy, his
filmy eyes sightless, his thin white fingers ever eager and nervous, his
hours full of deep thought and silent immobility. To him, what was the
benefit of that beautiful Perthshire castle which he had purchased from
Lord Strathavon a year before his compulsory retirement? What was the
use of the old ancestral manor near Caistor in Lincolnshire, or the
town-house in Park Street, the snug hunting-box at Melton, or the
beautiful palm-shaded, flower-embowered villa overlooking the blue
southern sea at San Remo? He remembered them all. He had misty visions
of their splendour and their luxury; but since his blindness he had
seldom, if ever, entered them. That big library up in Scotland in which
he now sat was the room he preferred; and with his daughter Gabrielle to
bear him company, to smooth his brow with her soft hand, to chatter and
to gossip, he wished for no other companion. His life was of the past, a
meteor that had flashed and had vanished for ever.

"Tell me, child, what is troubling you?" he w