Not very far from the ancient town of Caen, where the comparative quietude of Normandy, throughout the throes of the great revolution, has spared so many relics of the bygone France, is an old château, still habitable—still, after a fashion, comfortable—and which you may have at a very moderate rent indeed.
Here is an old wood, cut in a quincunx; old ponds stocked with carp; great old stables gone to decay; and the château itself, is indescribably picturesque and sad.
It is the Château de Cresseron—withdrawn in historic seclusion, amid the glories and regrets of memory, quite out of the tide of modern traffic.
Here, by the side of one of the ponds, one evening, was an old lady, throwing in little bits of bread to the carp that floated and flitted, like golden shadows, this way and that, as the crumbs sank in the water, when she heard a well-known voice near her which made her start.
"Good heavens! Mr. Verney! You here?" she exclaimed, with such utter wonderment, her little bit of bread raised in her fingers, that Cleve Verney, though in no merry mood, could not help smiling.
"Yes—here indeed—and after all, is it quite so wonderful?" said he.
"Well, of course you know, Mr. Verney, I'm very glad to see you. Of course, you know that; but I'm very far from being certain that you have done a wise or a prudent thing in coming here, and I don't know that, under the circumstances, I ought to be glad to see you; in fact, I'm afraid it is very rash," said Miss Sheckleton, growing more decided as she proceeded.
"No, not rash. I've been very miserable; so miserable, that the worst certainty which this visit might bring upon me would be almost a relief compared with the intolerable suspense I have lived in; therefore, you see, it really is not rash."
"I'm very bad at an argument," persisted the old lady; "but it is rash, and very rash. You can't conceive," and here she lowered her voice, "the state of exasperation in which he is."
"He," of course, could only mean Sir Booth Fanshawe; and Cleve answered,—