When the business was virtually settled, he came back to the house in great haste.

Meantime Mr. James Little went up to his dressing-room, as usual, to dress for dinner; but he remained there so long that, at last, Mrs. Little sent her maid to tell him dinner was ready.

The girl had hardly reached the top of the stairs, when she gave a terrible scream that rang through the whole house.

Mrs. Little rushed upstairs, and found her clinging to the balusters, and pointing at the floor, with eyes protruding and full of horror.  Her candle-stick had fallen from her benumbed hand; but the hall-lamp revealed what her finger was quivering and pointing at:  a dark fluid trickling slowly out into the lobby from beneath the bedroom door.

It was blood.

The room was burst into, and the wretched, tottering wife, hanging upon her sobbing servants, found her lover, her husband, her child’s father, lying on the floor, dead by his own hand; stone dead.  A terrible sight for strangers to see; but for her, what words can even shadow the horror of it!

I drop the veil on her wild bursts of agony, and piteous appeals to him who could not hear her cries.

The gaping wound that let out that precious life, her eye never ceased to see it, nor her own heart to bleed with it, while she lived.

She was gently dragged away, and supported down to another room.  Doctor Amboyne came and did what he could for her; and that was—­nothing.

At this time she seemed stupefied.  But when Guy came beaming into the room to tell her he had got her the money, a terrible scene occurred.  The bereaved wife uttered a miserable scream at sight of him, and swooned away directly.

The maids gathered round her, laid her down, and cut her stays, and told Guy the terrible tidings, in broken whispers, over her insensible body.

He rose to his feet horrified.  He began to gasp and sob.  And he yearned to say something to comfort her.  At that moment his house, his heart, and all he had, were hers.

But, as soon as she came to herself, and caught sight of him, she screamed out, “Oh, the sight of him! the sight of him!” and swooned away again.

Then the women pushed him out of the room, and he went away with uneven steps, and sick at heart.

He shut himself up in Raby Hall, and felt very sad and remorseful.  He directed his solicitor to render Mrs. Little every assistance, and supply her with funds.  But these good offices were respectfully declined by Mr. Joseph Little, the brother of the deceased, who had come from Birmingham to conduct the funeral and settle other matters.

Mr. Joseph Little was known to be a small master-cutler, who had risen from a workman, and even now put blades and handles together with his own hands, at odd times, though he had long ceased to forge or grind.

Mr. Raby drew in haughtily at this interference.