Ill?--I had no knowledge of it. In Russia?"

"Yes. My father was speaking of it yesterday. He had heard it from his
friend, old Mr. Otway. A fever of some kind. He's all right again, I
believe."

"We have heard nothing of it. There's your whistle. Good-bye!"

Jacks leapt into his train, waved a hand from the window, and was
whirled away.

For the rest of her journey, Irene seemed occupied with an alternation
of grave and amusing thoughts. At moments she looked seriously
troubled. This passed, and the arrival found her bright as ever; the
pink of modern maidenhood, fancy free.

The relatives she was visiting were two elderly ladies, cousins of her
mother; representatives of a family native to this locality for
hundreds of years. One of the two had been married, but husband and
child were long since dead; the other, devoted to sisterly affection,
had shared in the brief happiness of the wife and remained the solace
of the widow's latter years. They were in circumstances of simple
security, living as honoured gentlewomen, without display as without
embarrassment; fulfilling cheerfully the natural duties of their
position, but seeking no influence beyond the homely limits; their life
a humanising example, a centre of charity and peace. The house they
dwelt in came to them from their yeoman ancestors of long ago; it was
held on a lease of one thousand years from near the end of the
sixteenth century, "at a quit-rent of one shilling," and certain pieces
of furniture still in use were contemporary with the beginning of the
tenure. No corner of England more safely rural; beyond sound of railway
whistle, bosomed in great old elms, amid wide meadows and generous
tillage; sloping westward to the river Dee, and from its soft green
hills descrying the mountains of Wales.

Here in the old churchyard lay Irene's mother. She died in London, but
Dr. Derwent wished her to rest by the home of her childhood, where
Irene, too, as a little maid, had spent many a summer holiday. Over the
grave stood a simple slab of marble, white as the soul of her it
commemorated, graven thereon a name, parentage, dates of birth and
death--no more. Irene's father cared not to tell the world how that
bereavement left him.

Round about were many kindred tombs, the most noticeable that of Mrs.
Derwent's grandfather, a ripe old scholar, who rested from his mellow
meditations just before the century began.

"GULIELMI W----
Pii, docti, integri,
R