And asked for the master.
The master and mistress were just going out to a great dinner-party at the house of Mrs. Giath, their eldest daughter, in Palace Gardens, but Mr. Stubbs came down and saw him in the study. They were shut up there together for some time, until Mrs. Stubbs grew impatient, and knocked several times at the door, with a reminder that they would be very late, and that May would not like to be kept waiting. And at last Mr. Stubbs opened the door and came out.
"Get my coat, James," he said to the servant; then, as he buttoned it, added, "Mr. Senior will have a glass of wine and a biscuit before he goes. Good-night, Senior. See you in the morning."
"Lor, Pa!" exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs, as they rolled away from the door, "I thought something was the matter."
"No, my dear, only some important business Senior thought I ought to know about," he answered; and Mr. Stubbs that evening was the very light and life of his daughter's party.
But in the morning the crash came! Not that he was there to see it, though; for just as they reached home again, and he passed into his own house, Mr. Stubbs reeled and fell to the ground in all the hideousness of a severe paralytic seizure.
Nor did he ever, even partially, recover his senses; before the day was done he had gone out of the sea of trouble which overwhelmed him, to answer for his doings before a high and just tribunal, which, let us hope, would give him a more merciful judgment than he would have found in this world.
Mrs. Stubbs was broken-hearted and inconsolable. "If he had only been spared for a bit," she sobbed to her married daughters, who came to her in her trouble; "but to be taken sudden like that! oh, it is 'ard--it is 'ard."
"Poor Pa," murmured May; "he was so active, he couldn't have borne to be ill and helpless, as he would have been if he'd lived. I wouldn't fret so, if I were you, Ma, dear, I really wouldn't."