Weeks passed before his bride recognised the revolting truth, and when she came to know that he was doomed her pity was _so_ vast that she sickened under its weight.

She had come prepared to see him die, as all men do when they have lived out their time, but she had not counted on seeing him die like this, with suffering in his bleak old eyes and a smile of derision on his pallid lips.
Old Templeton Thorpe's sufferings were for himself, and he guarded them jealously with all the fortitude he could command.

His irascibility increased with his determination to fight it out alone.

He disdained every move on her part to extend sympathy and help to him.

To her credit, be it said, she would have become his nurse and consoler if he had let down the bars,--not willingly, of course, but because there was in Anne Thorpe, after all, the heart of a woman, and of such it must be said there is rarely an instance where its warmth has failed to respond to the call of human suffering.