Doctor Grimshawe's Secret — a Romance eBook

from this cause; at any rate, this was the case when the tomb was opened, about a year ago.  The grandmother’s coffin was then found to be filled with beautiful, glossy, living chestnut ringlets, into which her whole substance seems to have been transformed, for there was nothing else but these shining curls, the growth of half a century, in the tomb.  An old man, with a ringlet of his youthful mistress treasured in his heart, might be supposed to witness this wonderful thing.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

Note 1. In a study of the plot, too long to insert here, this new character of the steward is introduced and described.  It must suffice to say, in this place, that he was intimately connected with Dr. Grimshawe, who had resuscitated him after he had been hanged, and had thus gained his gratitude and secured his implicit obedience to his wishes, even twenty years after his (Grimshawe’s) death.  The use the Doctor made of him was to establish him in Braithwaite Hall as the perpetual confidential servant of the owners thereof.  Of course, the latter are not aware that the steward is acting in Grimshawe’s interest, and therefore in deadly opposition to their own.  Precisely what the steward’s mission in life was, will appear here-after.

The study above alluded to, with others, amounting to about a hundred pages, will be published as a supplement to a future edition of this work.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Note 1.  Author’s note.—­“Redclyffe lies in a dreamy state, thinking fantastically, as if he were one of the seven sleepers.  He does not yet open his eyes, but lies there in a maze.”

Note 2.  Author’s note.—­“Redclyffe must look at the old man quietly and dreamily, and without surprise, for a long while.”

Note 3. Presumably the true name of Doctor Grimshawe.

Note 4. This mysterious prisoner, Sir Edward Redclyffe, is not, of course, the Sir Edward who founded the Hospital, but a descendant of that man, who ruined Doctor Grimshawe’s daughter, and is the father of Elsie.  He had been confined in this chamber, by the Doctor’s contrivance, ever since, Omskirk being his jailer, as is foreshadowed in Chapter XL He has been kept in the belief that he killed Grimshawe, in a struggle that took place between them; and that his confinement in the secret chamber is voluntary on his own part,—­a measure of precaution to prevent arrest and execution for murder.  In this miserable delusion he has cowered there for five and thirty years.  This, and various other dusky points, are partly elucidated in the notes hereafter to be appended to this volume.

CHAPTER XXV.

Note 1. At this point, the author, for what reason I will not venture to surmise, chooses to append this gloss:  “Bubble-and-Squeak!”