“Nor I!” said Janet, with a great shudder.

“It would not be good for you,” suggested the Squire; “for the first glance from those dead and glittering eyes strikes any person of the lower orders dumb, the second, blind; the third, dead.  So I’m informed. Therefore—­let me advise you never to go near Cairnhope old church at night.”

“Not I, sir,” said the simple woman.

“Nor your children:  unless you are very tired of them.”

“Heaven forbid, sir!  But oh, sir, we thought it might be a warning like.”

“To whom?”

“Why, sir, th’ old Squire lies there; and heaps more of your folk:  and so Abel here was afear’d—­but you are the best judge; we be no scholars.  Th’ old church warn’t red-hot from eend to eend for naught:  that’s certain.”

“Oh it is me you came to warn?” said Raby, and his lip curled.

“Well, sir,” (mellifluously), “we thought you had the best right to know.”

“My good woman,” said the warned, “I shall die when my time comes.  But I shall not hurry myself, for all the gentlemen in Paradise, nor all the blackguards upon earth.”

He spake, and sipped his port with one hand, and waved them superbly back to their village with the other.

But, when they were gone, he pondered.

And the more he pondered, the further he got from the prosaic but singular fact.

CHAPTER II.

In the old oak dining-room, where the above colloquy took place, hung a series of family portraits.  One was of a lovely girl with oval face, olive complexion, and large dark tender eyes:  and this was the gem of the whole collection; but it conferred little pleasure on the spectator, owing to a trivial circumstance—­it was turned with its face to the wall; and all that met the inquiring eye was an inscription on the canvas, not intended to be laudatory.

This beauty, with her back to creation, was Edith Raby, Guy’s sister.

During their father’s lifetime she was petted and allowed her own way.  Hillsborough, odious to her brother, was, naturally, very attractive to her, and she often rode into the town to shop and chat with her friends, and often stayed a day or two in it, especially with a Mrs. Manton, wife of a wealthy manufacturer.

Guy merely sneered at her, her friends, and her tastes, till he suddenly discovered that she had formed an attachment to one of the obnoxious class, Mr. James Little, a great contract builder.  He was too shocked at first to vent his anger.  He turned pale, and could hardly speak; and the poor girl’s bosom began to quake.

But Guy’s opposition went no further than cold aversion to the intimacy—­until his father died.  Then, though but a year older than Edith, he assumed authority and, as head of the house, forbade the connection.  At the same time he told her he should not object, under the circumstances, to her marrying Dr. Amboyne, a rising physician, and a man of good family, who loved her sincerely, and had shown his love plainly before ever Mr. Little was heard of.