This magnificent house which his hard earnings had purchased,--this ballroom with its painted panels and sculptured friezes, crowded just now with kaleidoscope pictures of men and women whirling round and round in a maze of music and movement,--the thousand precious and costly things he had gathered about him in his journey through life,--must all pass out of his possession in a few brief years, and there was not a soul who loved him or whom he loved, to inherit them or value them for his sake.

A few brief years! And then--darkness.

The lights gone out,--the music silenced--the dancing done! And the love that he had dreamed of when he was a boy--love, strong and great and divine enough to outlive death--where was it?
A sudden sigh escaped him---- "_Dear_ Mr.Helmsley, you look so _very_ tired!" said a woman's purring voice at his ear.

"_Do_ go and rest in your own room for a few minutes before supper! You have been so kind!--Lucy is quite touched and overwhelmed by _all_ your goodness to her,--no _lover_ could do more for a girl, I'm _sure_! But really you _must_ spare yourself! What _should_ we do without you!" "What indeed!" he replied, somewhat drily, as he looked down at the speaker, a cumbrous matron attired in an over-frilled and over-flounced costume of pale grey, which delicate Quakerish colour rather painfully intensified the mottled purplish-red of her face.

"But I am not at all tired, Mrs.Sorrel, I assure you! Don't trouble yourself about me--I'm very well." "_Are_ you ?" And Mrs.Sorrel looked volumes of tenderest insincerity.
"Ah! But you know we _old_ people _must_ be careful! Young folks can do anything and everything--but _we_, at _our_ age, need to be _over_-particular!" "_You_ shouldn't call yourself old, Mrs.Sorrel," said Helmsley, seeing that she expected this from him, "you're quite a young woman." Mrs.Sorrel gave a little deprecatory laugh.
"Oh dear no!" she said, in a tone which meant "Oh dear yes!" "I wasn't married at sixteen, you know!" "No?
You surprise me!" Mrs.Sorrel peered at him from under her fat eyelids with a slightly dubious air.