Start not, reader! My host was not Nigel Harding, nor my hostess his wife, née Belle Mainwaring. The new master and mistress of the mansion were both better people, and both old acquaintances, whom I had encountered in the campo of the Parana. They were Henry Harding and his fair Italian sposa, now fully put in possession of their English estate.
I was not the only guest they were entertaining. The house was full of company, among whom were the ci-devant sindico of the Val di Orno, his son, and South American daughter-in-law.
If Henry Harding had lost one of his fingers, he had recovered all his old friends, and added a host of others, while Lucetta was surrounded by her own kindred.
In the mansion of Beechwood Park there was as much cheer, and perhaps far more contentment, than when the unamiable Nigel and his equally unamiable wife had the ordering of its entertainments.
I never met either of them again; nor were they ever after seen in that neighbourhood. But I have heard of them: their life since then, though dark—compared with the splendour that had for a time surrounded it—has not been one that should be deemed unendurable.
The generous Henry did not prove resentful for the wrong his half-brother had done him. Though of different mothers, they were sons of the same father; and for that father’s sake, Henry abstained from any act of revenge. Not only this, but he behaved towards Nigel with a noble generosity. To the thousand pounds left to the latter, in the second will, he added several other thousands—giving Nigel enough to keep him and his wife from want, even in England.
But England was no longer a land to Nigel’s liking. No more did it suit the taste of Belle Mainwaring. No more that of Belle Mainwaring’s match-making mother, who had signally failed in her schemes.
India was the country for them, and to India they went—Nigel to become a resident magistrate, and perhaps mete out injustice to the talookdars—his wife to distribute bewitching smiles to various subalterns, captains, and colonels; while the mother would find solace in dealing out Oriental scandal.
Of most of the other characters who have been conspicuous in our tale I am able to record something of later date.
Mr Woolet is still pettifogging—still robbing a poor clientèle, out of sufficient to keep a carriage at their expense; but not enough to tempt being employed by the rich. Of these, General Harding was his first client, his son Nigel the last.