How plainly he remembered how she had, with girlish shyness and coyness,
at first hesitated, and murmured something to herself about "an old
bald-beaded galoot," but when he told her that to him life without her
would be a blasted mockery, and that his income was L50,000 a year, she
threw herself on to him and froze there with the tenacity of a tick on a
brindled cow, and said, with tears of joy, "Hen-ery, I am thine."
And now he was dying. In a few short hours his spirit would rise up at
the call of the Destroyer and, quitting his poor, weak, earthly frame,
would go forth into that dim and dreaded Unknown Land, and solve with
certainty that Mystery which revealeth itself not to mortal man.
II
A carriage drove rapidly up the avenue and stopped at the door.
Sir Everhard FitzArmond, the famous London physician, who had been
telegraphed for, alighted and quickly ascended the marble steps. Lady
Oakhurst met him at the door, her lovely face expressing great anxiety
and grief. "Oh, Sir Everhard, I am so glad you have come.
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