“Until I was nearly fifteen years of age, when my health failed, and the surgeon from the nearest town was called to see me, and thought my case so serious that he wrote to my father, who was in Paris. My father then came to see me, took me and my governess to Brighton, and established us in elegant lodgings on the King’s Road.”
“That must have been a most delightful change. How long did you stay in Brighton, mamma? And where did you go next? Not back to Weirdwaste, I hope,” said Wynnette.
“No, not back to Weirdwaste. I have never seen the dreary place since I left it,” replied the lady, in a low voice, but with paling cheeks and troubled brow.
“Mamma, love,” said Odalite, rising, “will you come with me into the library now and help me to translate the passage in Camoëns we were talking about yesterday?”
“Yes, dear,” replied the lady, rising to follow her eldest daughter.
“Well, I’m blest if that isn’t playing it rather too low down on a fellow, Odalite—I mean it is very inconsiderate in you to carry off mamma just as she is telling about the days of her youth, for the very first time, too! Bah! bother! what a nuisance!”
But Mrs. Force and her eldest daughter had passed out of the room.
The death of Old Zillah caused quite a commotion in the castle and its neighborhood. Notwithstanding her age, or, perhaps, because of her great age, her death came as a surprise, not to say as a shock, to the community. She had lived so long that it almost seemed as if she must always continue to live.
“Why, it’s like as if the old tower of the ruined castle itself had fallen!” said one to another.
People came from far and near to see the remains of the centenarian, and to get her real age, and hear some facts of her life. And all the cruel old legends were raked up again, until the whole air of the place was full of fetor, fire and brimstone. The people reveled in the moral malaria.