What happened immediately after no one ever precisely knew. Not
even the waiting servant had heard the street-door shut.

Next morning the park-keepers found a young man lying on the grass
in Hyde Park, drenched to the skin with the night's heavy rain,
unconscious, and apparently dying. The papers in his pockets proved
that he was Philip Vaughan. A long and desperate illness followed,
and for months both life and reason trembled in the balance. Lord
Liscombe hurried up to London, and Vaughan's servant explained
everything. Arthur Grey had been taken ill on the homeward voyage.
The symptoms would now be recognized as typhoid, but the disease
had not then been diagnosed, and the ship's surgeon pronounced it
"low fever." He landed at Southampton, pushed his way to London,
arrived at his lodgings more dead than alive, and almost immediately
sank into the coma from which he never recovered. It was impossible
to communicate with Vaughan, whose address was unknown; and when
his telegram arrived, announcing his instant return, the servant
and the landlady agreed that he must have heard the news from some
other source, and was hurrying back to see his friend before he
became invisible for ever. "You're just in time" meant just in
time to see the body, for the coffin was to be closed that evening.

* * * * *

The struggle was long and desperate, but Vaughan had on his side
youth and a constitution, not strong indeed, but unweakened by
profligacy. By slow degrees his nervous system rallied from the
shock, and after a long period of foreign travel he returned, in
great part, to his former habits. Only he could not and would not