There was little in it--Just a few papers, business papers
on his Companies, and a schedule of his debts; not even a copy of his
will--he had not made one, nothing to leave! Letters he had never kept.
Half a dozen bills, a few receipts, and the little pink note with the
blue forget-me-not. That was the lot! An old tree gives up bearing
leaves, and its roots dry up, before it comes down in a wind; an old
man's world slowly falls away from him till he stands alone in the
night. Looking at the pink note, he thought: 'Suppose I'd married
Alice--a man never had a better mistress!' He fumbled the drawer to; but
still he strayed feebly about the room, with a curious shrinking from
sitting down, legacy from the quarter of an hour he had been compelled
to sit while that hound worried at his throat. He was opposite one of
the pictures now. It gleamed, dark and oily, limning a Scots Grey who
had mounted a wounded Russian on his horse, and was bringing him
back prisoner from the Balaclava charge. A very old friend--bought in
'fifty-nine. It had hung in his chambers in the Albany--hung with him
ever since. With whom would it hang when he was gone? For that holy
woman would scrap it, to a certainty, and stick up some Crucifixion or
other, some new-fangled high art thing! She could even do that now if
she liked--for she owned it, owned every mortal stick in the room, to
the very glass he would drink his champagne from; all made over under
the settlement fifteen years ago, before his last big gamble went wrong.
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