A piercing cry rang out close beside him—­Diana’s cry.  His life made a last rally, and his eyes opened.  They closed again, and he heard no more.

Sir James Chide stooped over Diana.

“Run for help!—­brandy!—­a doctor!  I’ll stay with him.  Run!”

Diana ran.  She met Mrs. Colwood hurrying, and sent her for brandy.  She herself sped on blindly toward the village.

A few yards beyond the Beechcote gate she was overtaken by a carriage.  There was an exclamation, the carriage pulled up sharp, and a man leaped from it.

“Miss Mallory!—­what is the matter?”

She looked up, saw Oliver Marsham, and, in the carriage behind him, Lady Lucy, sitting stiff and pale, with astonished eyes.

“Mr. Ferrier is ill—­very ill!  Please go for the doctor!  He is here—­at my house.”

The figure in the carriage rose hurriedly.  Lady Lucy was beside her.

“What is the matter?” She laid an imperious hand on the girl’s arm.

“I think—­he is dying,” said Diana, gasping.  “Oh, come!—­come back at once!”

Marsham was already in the carriage.  The horse galloped forward.  Diana and Lady Lucy ran toward the house.

“In the garden,” said Diana, breathlessly; and, taking Lady Lucy’s hand, she guided her.

Beside the dying man stood Sir James Chide, Muriel Colwood, and the old butler.  Sir James looked up, started at the sight of Lady Lucy, and went to meet her.

“You are just in time,” he said, tenderly; “but he is going fast.  We have done all we could.”

Ferrier was now lying on the grass, his head supported.  Lady Lucy sank beside him.

“John!” she called, in a voice of anguish—­“John—­dear, dear friend!”

But the dying man made no sign.  And as she lifted his hand to her lips—­the love she had shown him so grudgingly in life speaking now undisguised through her tears and her despair—­Sir James watched the gentle passage of the last breaths, and knew that all was done—­the play over and the lights out.

CHAPTER XIX

A sad hurrying and murmuring filled the old rooms and passages of Beechcote.  The village doctor had arrived, and under his direction the body of John Ferrier had been removed from the garden to the library of the house.  There, amid Diana’s books and pictures, Ferrier lay, shut-eyed and serene, that touch of the ugly and the ponderous which in life had mingled with the power and humanity of his aspect entirely lost and drowned in the dignity of death.

Chide and the doctor were in low-voiced consultation at one end of the room; Lady Lucy sat beside the body, her face buried in her hands; Marsham stood behind her.

Brown, the butler, noiselessly entered the room, and approached Chide.

“Please sir, Lord Broadstone’s messenger is here.  He thinks you might wish him to take back a letter to his lordship.”