anor, and made his features a flexible mask. Mrs. Doria
Forey, his widowed sister, said that Austin might have retired from his
Parliamentary career for a time, and given up gaieties and that kind of
thing; her opinion, founded on observation of him in public and private,
was, that the light thing who had taken flight was but a feather on
her brother's Feverel-heart, and his ordinary course of life would be
resumed. There are times when common men cannot bear the weight of just
so much. Hippias Feverel, one of his brothers, thought him immensely
improved by his misfortune, if the loss of such a person could be
so designated; and seeing that Hippias received in consequence free
quarters at Raynham, and possession of the wing of the Abbey she had
inhabited, it is profitable to know his thoughts. If the baronet had
given two or three blazing dinners in the great hall he would have
deceived people generally, as he did his relatives and intimates. He was
too sick for that: fit only for passive acting.

The nursemaid waking in the night beheld a solitary figure darkening a
lamp above her little sleeping charge, and became so used to the sight
as never to wake with a start. One night she was strangely aroused by
a sound of sobbing. The baronet stood beside the cot in his long black
cloak and travelling cap. His fingers shaded a lamp, and reddened
against the fitful darkness that ever and anon went leaping up the wall.
She could hardly believe her senses to see the austere gentleman, dead
silent, dropping tear upon tear before her eyes. She lay stone-still in
a trance of terror and mournfulness, mechanically counting the tears
as they fell, one by one. The hidden face, the fall and flash of those
heavy drops in the light of the lamp he held, the upright, awful figure,
agitated at regular intervals like a piece of clockwork by the low
murderous catch of his breath: it was so piteous to her poor human
nature that her heart began wildly palpitating. Involuntarily the poor
girl cried out to him, "Oh, sir!" and fell a-weeping. Sir Austin turned
the lamp on her pillow, and harshly bade her go to sleep, striding from
the room forthwith. He dismissed her with a purse the next day.

Once, when he was seven years old, the little fellow woke up at night to
see a lady bending over him. He talked of this the neat day, but it was
treated as a dream; until in the course of the day his uncle Algernon
was driven home from Lobourne cricket-groun