He reeled once more,
like a drunken man. Then he clutched at a chair and sat down. His
brain was flooded.
He collapsed all at once, mumbling to himself some inarticulate
gibberish. Half an hour later, the servants came in and found him.
He was seated in his chair, still doddering feebly. The house was
roused. A doctor was summoned, and the Colonel put to bed. Lady
Emily watched him with devoted care. But it was all in vain. The
doctor shook his head the moment he examined him. "A paralytic
stroke," he said gravely; "and a very serious one. He seems to have
had a slighter attack some time since, and to have wholly neglected
it. A great blood-vessel in the brain must have given way with a
rush. I can hold out no hope. He won't live till morning."
And indeed, as it turned out, about ten that night the Colonel's
loud and stentorious breathing began to fail slowly. The intervals
grew longer and longer between each recurrent gasp, and life died
away at last in imperceptible struggles.
By two in the morning, Kelmscott of Tilgate lay dead on his bed;
and his two unacknowledged and unrecognised sons were the masters
of his property.
But one of them was at that moment being tossed about wildly on the
waves of Biscay; and the other was locked up on a charge of murder
in the county jail at Tavistock, in Devonshire.
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