own case--as Sir Richard himself had stated it upon
his deathbed. His life had not been happy; it had been poisoned by a
monomania, which, like a worm in the bud, had consumed the sweetness
of his existence. Sir Richard was at rest. And since he had been
discovered, that shot was, indeed, the most merciful end that could have
been measured out to him. The alternative might have been the gibbet
and the gaping crowd, and a moral torture to precede the end. Better--a
thousand times better--as it was.

So much did all this weigh with him that when on the following Monday
he accompanied the body to its grave, he found his erstwhile passionate
grief succeeded by an odd thankfulness that things were as they were,
although it must be confessed that a pang of returning anguish smote him
when he heard the earth clattering down upon the wooden box that held
all that remained of the man who had been father, mother, brother and
all else to him.

He turned away at last, and was leaving the graveyard, when some one
touched him on the arm. It was a timid touch. He turned sharply,
and found himself looking into the sweet face of Hortensia Winthrop,
wondering how came she there. She wore a long, dark cloak and hood, but
her veil was turned back. A chair was waiting not fifty paces from them
along the churchyard wall.

"I came but to tell you how much I feel for you in this great loss," she
said.

He looked at her in amazement. "How did you know?" he asked her.

"I guessed," said she. "I heard that you were with him at the end, and
I caught stray words from her ladyship of what had passed. Lord Rotherby
had the information from the tipstaff who went to arrest Sir Richard
Everard. I guessed he was your--your foster-father, as you called him;
and I came to tell you how deeply I sorrow for you in your sorrow."

He caught her hands in his and bore them to his lips, reckless of who
might see the act. "Ah, this is sweet and kind in you," said he.

She drew him back into the churchyard again. Along the wall there was
an avenue of limes--a cool and pleasant walk wherein idlers lounged on
Sundays in summer after service. Thither she drew him. He went almost
mechanically. Her sympathy stirred his sorrow again, as sympathy so
often does.

"I have buried my heart yonder, I think," said he, with a wave of his
hand towards that spot amid the graves where the men were toiling with
their shovels. "He was the only living being that loved me."