"She be'ant never well; and the sooner she goes the better it will be for her, depend upon that. She do lead a wretched life, the more's the pity; for she is a dear kind lady, a thousand times too good for the like o' him."
Algernon sighed deeply, while the girl delighted to get an opportunity of abusing her tyrannical master, continued:
"My poor mistress has been looking out for you all day, sir; but when your coach drove into the court-yard she died right away. The Squire got into a terrible passion, and told me to carry her up into her own room, and lock her in until company be gone. Howsumever I was too much flurried to do that; for I am sure my dear missus is too ill to be seen by strangers. He do keep her so shabby, that she have not a gownd fit to wear; and she do look as pale as a ghost; and I am sure she is nearer to her end than the stingy old Squire is to his."
Algernon possessed too much delicacy to ask the girl if Mark treated Mrs. Hurdlestone ill; but whilst groping his way in the dark to his brother's room, he was strongly tempted to question her more closely on the subject. The account she had already given him of the unfortunate lady filled his mind with indignation and regret. At the end of a long gallery the girl suddenly stopped, and pointing to a half-open door, told him that "that was the Squire's room," and suddenly disappeared. The next moment, Algernon was by the sick-bed of his brother.
Not without a slight degree of perturbation he put aside the curtain; Mark had sunk into a kind of stupor; he was not asleep, although his eyes were closed, and his features so rigid and immovable, that at the first glance Algernon drew back, under the impression that he was already dead.
The sound of his brother's footsteps not only roused the miser to animation, but to an acute sense of suffering. For some minutes he writhed in dreadful pain, and Algernon had time to examine his ghastly face, and thin attenuated figure.
They had parted in the prime of youthful manhood—they met in the autumn of life; and the snows of winter had prematurely descended upon the head of the miser. The wear and tear of evil passions had made such fearful ravages in his once handsome and stern exterior, that his twin brother would have passed him in the streets without recognition.
The spasms at length subsided, and after several ineffectual efforts, Algernon at length spoke.
"Mark, I am here, in compliance with your request; I am very sorry to find you in this sad state; I hope that you may yet recover."
The sick man rose slowly up in his bed, and shading his eyes with his hand, surveyed his brother with a long and careful gaze, as though he scarcely recognised in the portly figure before him the elegant fashionable young man of former days. "Algernon! can that be you?"