dropping down to playing the fiddle, and paying rent and taxes
in a suburban villa! How are the fast men fallen! Good bye, Basil, good
bye!"

VII.

The next morning, Ralph never appeared--the day passed on, and I heard
nothing--at last, when it was evening, a letter came from him.

The letter informed me that my brother had written to Mr. Sherwin,
simply asking whether he had recovered his daughter. The answer to
this question did not arrive till late in the day; and was in the
negative--Mr. Sherwin had not found his daughter. She had left the
hospital before he got there; and no one could tell him whither she
had gone. His language and manner, as he himself admitted, had been so
violent that he was not allowed to enter the ward where Mannion lay.
When he returned home, he found his wife at the point of death; and on
the same evening she expired. Ralph described his letter, as the letter
of a man half out of his senses. He only mentioned his daughter, to
declare, in terms almost of fury, that he would accuse her before his
wife's surviving relatives, of having been the cause of her mother's
death; and called down the most terrible denunciations on his own head,
if he ever spoke to his child again, though he should see her starving
before him in the streets. In a postscript, Ralph informed me that he
would call the next morning, and concert measures for tracking Sherwin's
daughter to her present retreat.

Every sentence in this letter bore warning of the crisis which was now
close at hand; yet I had as little of the desire as of the power to
prepare for it. A superstitious conviction that my actions were governed
by a fatality which no human foresight could alter or avoid, began to
strengthen within me. From this time forth, I awaited events with the
uninquiring patience, the helpless resignation of despair.

My brother came, punctual to his appointment. When he proposed that I
should at once accompany him to the hospital, I never hesitated at doing
as he desired. We reached our destination; and Ralph approached the
gates to make his first enquiries.

He was still speaking to the porter, when a gentleman advanced towards
them, on his way out of the hospital. I saw him recognise my brother,
and heard Ralph exclaim:

"Bernard! Jack Bernard! Have you come to England, of all the men in the
world!"

"Why not?" was the answer. "I got every surgical testimonial the _Hotel
Dieu_ could give me, six months ago; and could