Old Comrades by Agnes Giberne

COLONEL TRACY ill was altogether another man from Colonel Tracy well. His brusquerie and independence were nowhere. His military carriage vanished with the rust-red of his complexion. He had grown pale and yellowish, limp and languid. He could not bear to be left alone, depended meekly on Dorothea's judgment, and went in with praiseworthy submission for any amount of semi-liquid invalid messes.

Nobody would have expected so vigorous a man to be so soon pulled down; but people are always doing what would not be expected of them. When, on the third day of the new year, Colonel Tracy tottered across from his bedroom to the drawing-room, and dropped feebly into an arm-chair, he might have been ill for months.