Rose lay with her arms outstretched upon the bed.  Clara, the nurse, sat with her head covered, sobbing in spasms of terror.  And Mrs. Sterling with “the light that never was on sea or land” luminous on her face, lay there so still that even the Bishop was deceived at first.  Then, as the great truth broke upon him and Dr. Bruce, he staggered, and the sharp agony of the old wound shot through him.  It passed, and left him standing there in that chamber of death with the eternal calmness and strength that the children of God have a right to possess.  And right well he used that calmness and strength in the days that followed.

The next moment the house below was in a tumult.  Almost at the same time the doctor who had been sent for at once, but lived some distance away, came in, together with police officers, who had been summoned by frightened servants.  With them were four or five newspaper correspondents and several neighbors.  Dr. Bruce and the Bishop met this miscellaneous crowd at the head of the stairs and succeeded in excluding all except those whose presence was necessary.  With these the two friends learned all the facts ever known about the “Sterling tragedy,” as the papers in their sensational accounts next day called it.

Mr. Sterling had gone into his room that evening about nine o’clock and that was the last seen of him until, in half an hour, a shot was heard in the room, and a servant who was in the hall ran into the room and found him dead on the floor, killed by his own hand.  Felicia at the time was sitting by her mother.  Rose was reading in the library.  She ran upstairs, saw her father as he was being lifted upon the couch by the servants, and then ran screaming into her mother’s room, where she flung herself down at the foot of the bed in a swoon.  Mrs. Sterling had at first fainted at the shock, then rallied with a wonderful swiftness and sent for Dr. Bruce.  She had then insisted on seeing her husband.  In spite of Felicia’s efforts, she had compelled Clara to support her while she crossed the hall and entered the room where her husband lay.  She had looked upon him with a tearless face, had gone back to her own room, was laid on her bed, and as Dr. Bruce and the Bishop entered the house she, with a prayer of forgiveness for herself and for her husband on her quivering lips, had died, with Felicia bending over her and Rose still lying senseless at her feet.

So great and swift had been the entrance of grim Death into that palace of luxury that Sunday night!  But the full cause of his coming was not learned until the facts in regard to Mr. Sterling’s business affairs were finally disclosed.

Then it was learned that for some time he had been facing financial ruin owing to certain speculations that had in a month’s time swept his supposed wealth into complete destruction.  With the cunning and desperation of a man who battles for his very life when he saw his money, which was all the life he ever valued, slipping from him, he had put off the evil day to the last moment.  Sunday afternoon, however, he had received news that proved to him beyond a doubt the fact of his utter ruin.  The very house that he called his, the chairs in which he sat, his carriage, the dishes from which he ate, had all been bought with money for which he himself had never really done an honest stroke of pure labor.