“Lord, Sir, I don’t know! but he told us for several days past that he should not stay over the week, and so we were not surprised when he left us this morning at seven o’clock. Poor gentleman, my heart bled for him when I saw him look so pale and ill.”
And here I did see the good woman’s eyes fill with tears: but she wiped them away, and took advantage of the additional persuasion they gave to her natural whine to say, “If, Sir, you know of any young gentleman who likes fen-shooting, and wants a nice, pretty, quiet apartment—”
“I will certainly recommend this,” said I.
“You see it at present,” rejoined the landlady, “quite in a litter like: but it is really a sweet place in summer.”
“Charming,” said I, with a cold shiver, hurrying down the stairs, with a pain in my ear, and the rheumatism in my shoulder.
“And this,” thought I, “was Glanville’s residence for nearly a month! I wonder he did not exhale into a vapour, or moisten into a green damp.”
I went home by the churchyard. I paused on the spot where I had last seen him. A small gravestone rose over the mound of earth on which he had thrown himself; it was perfectly simple. The date of the year and month (which showed that many weeks had not elapsed since the death of the deceased) and the initials G. D. were all that was engraved upon the stone. Beside this tomb was one of a more pompous description, to the memory of a Mrs. Douglas, which had with the simple tumulus nothing in common, unless the initial letter of the surname corresponding with the latter initial on the neighbouring gravestone, might authorize any connection between them, not supported by that similitude of style usually found in the cenotaphs of the same family: the one, indeed, might have covered the grave of a humble villager—the other, the resting-place of the lady of the manor.
I found, therefore, no clue for the labyrinth of surmise: and I went home, more vexed and disappointed with my day’s expedition than I liked to acknowledge to myself.
Lord Vincent met me in the hall. “Delighted to see you,” said he, “I have just been to—, (the nearest town) in order to discover what sort of savages abide there. Great preparations for a ball—all the tallow candles in the town are bespoken—and I heard a most uncivilized fiddle,
“‘Twang short and sharp, like the shrill swallow’s cry.’”