“You may well say ‘old,’” remarked the young lady. “It has been the abode of the Monk family from generation to generation. For my part, I sometimes half wish it would tumble down that we might move to a more lively locality. Church Leet is a dead-alive place at best.”
“We always want what we have not,” laughed Mr. Hamlyn. “I would give all I am worth to possess an ancestral home, no matter if it were grim and gloomy. We who can boast of only modern wealth look upon these family castles with an envy you have little idea of.”
“If you possess modern wealth, you possess a very good and substantial thing,” she answered, echoing his laugh.—“Here comes my aunt, full of wonder.”
Full of alarm also. Mrs. Carradyne stood on the terrace steps, asking if there had been an accident.
“Nothing serious, Aunt Emma. Saladin refused the fence at Ring Gap, and we both came down together. This gentleman was so obliging as to forego his day’s sport and escort me home. Mr.—Mr. Hamlyn, I believe?” she added. “My aunt, Mrs. Carradyne.”
The stranger confirmed it. “Philip Hamlyn,” he said to Mrs. Carradyne, lifting his hat.
Gaining the hall-door with slow and gentle steps came a young man, whose beautiful features were wasting more perceptibly day by day, and their hectic growing of a deeper crimson. “What is wrong, Eliza?” he cried. “Have you come to grief? Where’s Saladin?”
“My brother,” she said to Mr. Hamlyn.
Yes, it was indeed Hubert Monk. For he did not die of that run to the church the past New Year’s Eve. The death-like faint proved to be a faint, nothing more. Nothing more then. But something else was advancing with gradual steps: steps that seemed to be growing almost perceptible now.
Now and again Hubert fainted in the same manner; his face taking a death-like hue, the blue tinge surrounding his mouth. Captain Monk, unable longer to shut his eyes to what might be impending, called in the best medical advice that Worcestershire could afford; and the doctors told him the truth—that Hubert’s days were numbered.