After a brief delay he was shown up to that gentleman's room.
Mr. Colville was a rather handsome but dissipated-looking man, of perhaps forty years. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, and the elegance of his apparel, his costly diamonds, as well as the luxuriousness of the furniture about him, betokened a man of wealth and ease.
He removed his cigar from his dark mustached lips, and said, with a light laugh:
"Ah, Pratt, what deviltry are you up to now?"
"I have just come from attending a funeral," Doctor Pratt answered sedately, as he seated himself in a satin-cushioned arm-chair.
"A funeral!" Mr. Colville started and grew pale. "Was it that of—of Miss Lawrence?"
"The same," was the calm reply.
"Ah! beautiful Lily—so you are gone to be the bride of death—to be clasped to her icy heart! Well, better so," said Colville, bitterly.
"I wonder at your coldness," said Doctor Pratt, eying him keenly. "I thought you loved her to desperation."
"Man, man—I did, I did!" cried out Colville, starting up and pacing the floor wildly, "but what of that? She would not have my love. She laughed it to scorn, and was about to give herself to my haughty rival. Great Heaven! I was nearly crazed by the knowledge. It was a happy madness that armed her hand against her own life! I am glad she is dead. I would rather she were the prey of the worm than given to the arms of another."