“Oh no, Cousin Catherine,” interposed Violet; “do let us see them. We can tell Cuth, or give them to him; but old family letters, especially about Waynflete and the ghosts, would be quite too awfully jolly.”
Miss Maxwell looked at the blooming girl with her outspoken voice and her straight-looking eyes, her sailor hat, and her boyish jacket, as if she had never thought of any one like her before; she sighed and looked solemn, but pulled out the drawer of the card-table, and took therefrom, with great mystery, two or three yellow-looking letters, an old Prayer-book, and a very dirty pack of cards, and on one of these she pointed out a dark stain. “My loves,” she whispered; “this was stained on that fatal night with Squire Waynflete’s life blood.”
Violet became suddenly serious, and Florella could hardly help crying out in protest against touching these things which seemed to her full of a living trouble.
Miss Maxwell opened the Prayer-book which was bound in red morocco, most delicately tooled and gilt. On the title-page was written “Margaret Waynflete” and the dates of the births of her two sons. “Guy Waynflete, born June 19th, 1760,” and then “My Pretty Baby;” then “Godfrey Waynflete, 1764,” and then in the same pointed, careful hand—
“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him.”
Florella could not speak a word, and when the book was handed to her to look at, she laid her hand on it with a soft, reverent touch.
Then Miss Maxwell with some ceremony opened the two papers, and begged Kitty to read them aloud.
The first was in the hand of this long dead Margaret Waynflete, and was evidently the brief commencement of a journal or diary.
February 10th, 1785.—My son Guy has gone to London.
February 12th.—We have killed another little Pig.