She lowered her voice as she spoke, as if the subject would not bear the broad light of day. Any surprise, greater than appeared in Mrs. Gass's face at hearing it could not well be imagined.
"Ma'am! Did he tell you of that?"
"Did who tell me?"
"Your son."
They looked questioningly at each other; both unconscious that they were alluding to two totally different circumstances. Cross-purposes are sometimes productive of more evil than straightforward ones.
It appeared that a night or two after Edmund North's death, Captain Bohun found in his own desk a sheet of folded notepaper in an envelope. It contained a few words in Edmund's handwriting, not apparently addressed to any one in particular, but to the world in general. No date was added, but the ink looked fresh, as if it had recently been written.
"When the end comes, make no fuss with me, but bury me quietly out of sight.--E. N."
Captain Bohun, not having the faintest idea as to who put it in his desk, or how it came there, carried it to Richard North. Richard showed it to his father. Thence it spread to the house, and to one or two others. Opinions were divided. Mr. North thought his ill-fated son had intended to allude to his own death: must have felt some foreshadowing of it on his spirit. On the contrary, Arthur Bohun and Richard both thought that it was nothing more than one of his scraps of poetry: and this last idea was at length adopted. Arthur Bohun had related the circumstance to Mrs. Cumberland, and it was this she meant to speak of to Mrs. Gass. Mrs. Gass, who knew nothing about it, thought, quite naturally, that she spoke of the paper found on her carpet.
"Of course it might have been nothing more than some ideas he had dotted down, poor fellow, connected with his nonsensical poetry," slightingly observed Mrs. Cumberland, who was the first to continue speaking: "Richard North and Captain Bohun both hold to that opinion. I don't. It may be that I am inclined to look always on the gloomy side of life; but I can only think he was alluding to his own death."
"'Twas odd sort of poetry," cried Mrs. Gass, after a pause and a stare.