"True; I pressed upon him lately my belief that Richard had formed that—of which he had a horror so great—a mésalliance—in fact, a low or improper attachment for one beneath us in rank and name. My uncle's fury became great, and to take advantage of the time, I placed before him a will, leaving all his estates, as he had a hundred times threatened to do, to me and mine. I had the document ready written, and placed it before him; but as fate would have it, in his pride, fury, and resentment, a spasm seized the old man, and he fell back dying, actually with the pen in his hand, after I had dipped it in that silver inkstand and placed it between his fingers."
"How extremely unfortunate!" said Mrs. Downie Trevelyan, placing her scent-bottle languidly to her little pink nostrils.
"Unfortunate? It was a narrow chance by which to lose thirty thousand a year!" said Downie, grinding his teeth, while his eyes gleamed like two bits of grey glass in moonlight. "There is some mystery about Richard's life; moreover, he wears a woman's miniature at his neck."
"Young—is she?"
"Well—yes—she seems so."
"And pretty?" added Mrs. Downie, glancing at herself in a mirror.
"Very."
"His intended, perhaps?"
"I hope she is not more than that; but time must soon show now."
And over the porte-cochère of Rhoscadzhel there now hung a vast lozenge-shaped hatchment or funeral escutcheon, the sight of which would have delighted him, whose memory it was meant to honour, being the achievement of a bachelor peer, representing the arms of Lamorna in a shield complete—the demi-horse argent of the Trevelyans rising from the sea; over all, the baron's coronet, crest, motto, and mantling, collared by the Orders of the Bath and St. Anne; and after some old fashion, retained still only in Germany, Scotland, and France, the herald-painter had depicted at each corner a death-head, while all the black interstices were powdered with tears.