“Oh! that is what he called his ‘last counsel’ to me.  It’s as wild as the rest,—­tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career.  First he says, ‘Farewell—­farewell’; then he bids me take his ’counsel into memory on Christmas day’; then after enumerating all the wretched classes he can think of in the country, he says:  ’These are your sisters and your brothers,—­love them all.’ Here he says, ’O friend, strong in wealth for so much good, take my last counsel.  In the name of the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind.’ He goes on to bid me ’live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, and the poor’; and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends of society; and tells me that what he calls ’a service to humanity’ is worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything we can gain from the world.  Ah, well! poor George.”

“But isn’t all that true, father?” said Netty; “it seems so.”

“H’m,” he murmured through his closed lips.  Then with a vague smile, folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, “Wild words, Netty, wild words.  I’ve no objection to charity, judiciously given; but poor George’s notions are not mine.  Every man for himself, is a good general rule.  Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in his acceptation of the principle, would send us all to the almshouse pretty soon.  The greatest good of the greatest number,—­that’s my rule of action.  There are plenty of good institutions for the distressed, and I’m willing to help support ’em, and do.  But as for making a martyr of one’s self, or tilting against the necessary evils of society, or turning philanthropist at large, or any quixotism of that sort, I don’t believe in it.  We didn’t make the world, and we can’t mend it.  Poor George.  Well—­he’s at rest.  The world wasn’t the place for him.”

They grew silent.  The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood as if it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton’s rule of action, was to become of the greatest good of the smallest number.  Nathalie sat on her father’s knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of his having been starved and grieved to death.

“Father,” said Nathalie, softly, “I felt, while you were reading the letter, as if he were near us.  Didn’t you?  The room was so light and still, and the wind sighed so.”

“Netty, dear, I’ve felt that all day, I believe,” he replied.  “Hark! there is the door-bell.  Off goes the spirit-world, and here comes the actual.  Confound it!  Some one to see me, I’ll warrant, and I’m not in the mood.”

He got into a fret at once.  Netty was not the Netty of an hour ago, or she would have coaxed him out of it.  But she did not notice it now in her abstraction.  She had risen at the tinkle of the bell, and seated herself in a chair.  Presently a nose, with a great pimple on the end of it, appeared at the edge of the door, and a weak, piping voice said, reckless of the proper tense, “There was a woman wanted to see you, sir.”