t home!--why, yes, sir; it's more than her life's worth to leave home.
She durst not go to church without master's leave."

"And is she well?"

"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 recogni