e little enough to atone for, madam," said Tom, as he busied
himself about the sufferer. He saw that all would soon be over, and
would have had Mrs. Vavasour withdraw: but she was so really good a
nurse as long as she could control herself, that he could hardly spare
her.

So they sat together by the sick-bed side, as the short hours passed
into the long, and the long hours into the short again, and the October
dawn began to shine through the shutterless window.

A weary eventless night it was, a night as of many years, as worse and
worse grew the weak frame; and Tom looked alternately at the heaving
chest, and shortening breath, and rattling throat, and then at the pale
still face of the lady.

"Better she should sit by (thought he), and watch him till she is tired
out. It will come on her the more gently, after all. He will die at
sunrise, as so many die."

At last be began gently feeling for Elsley's pulse.

Her eye caught his movement, and she half sprang up; but at a gesture
from him she sank quietly on her knees, holding her husband's hand in
her own.

Elsley turned toward her once, ere the film of death had fallen, and
looked her full in the face, with his beautiful eyes full of love. Then
the eyes paled and faded; but still they sought for her painfully long
after she had buried her head in the coverlet, unable to bear the sight.

And so vanished away Elsley Vavasour, poet and genius, into his own
place.

"Let us pray," said a deep voice from behind the curtain: it was Mark
Armsworth's. He had come over with the first dawn, to bring the ladies
food; had slipped upstairs to ask what news, found the door open, and
entered in time to see the last gasp.

Lucia kept her head still buried: and Tom, for the first time for many a
year, knelt, as the old banker commended to God the soul of our dear
brother just departing this life. Then Mark glided quietly downstairs,
and Valencia, rising, tried to lead Mrs. Vavasour away.

But then broke out in all its wild passion the Irish temperament. Let us
pass it over; why try to earn a little credit by depicting the agony and
the weakness of a sister?

At last Thurnall got her downstairs. Mark was there still, having sent
off for his carriage. He quietly put her arm through his, led her off,
worn out and unresisting, drove her home, delivered her and Valencia
into Mary's keeping, and then asked Tom to stay and sit with him.

"I hope I've no very bad conscience, boy