. Lacy carried home with him.

CHAPTER I.

"What thousand voices pass through all the rooms,
What cries and hurries!
........................................
My cousin's death sits heavy on my conscience; hark!
........................................
In every room confusion, they're all mad.
Most certain all stark mad within the house."

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

I was born and educated in the house of my uncle, Mr.
Middleton, one of the wealthiest squires in D--shire. He had
received my mother with kindness and affection, on her return
from India, where she had lost her husband and her eldest
child. She was his youngest and favourite sister, and when
after having given birth to a daughter she rapidly declined in
health, and soon after expired, bequeathing that helpless
infant to his protection, he silently resolved to treat it as
his own, and, like most resolutions formed in silence, it was
religiously adhered to. At the time of my birth, my uncle was
about forty years old; a country gentleman in the most
respectable sense of the word.

Devoted to the improvement of his tenants on the one hand, and
to that of his estate on the other; zealous as a magistrate,
active as a farmer, charitable towards the poor, and
hospitable towards the rich, he was deservedly popular with
his neighbours, and much looked up to in his county. He had
been attached in his youth to the daughter of a clergyman of
eminent abilities and high character, who resided in the
neighbourhood of Elmsley. For six years his father had opposed
his intended marriage with Miss Selby, and when at the end of
that time he extorted from him a reluctant consent, it was too
late to press his suit; she was dying of a hopeless decline,
and to cheer her few remaining days of life by every token of
the most devoted affection, and after her death to mourn
deeply and silently over the wreck of his early hopes, was the
conclusion of an attachment to which Mr. Middleton had looked,
as to the source and means of all his future happiness. At the
age of thirty-five he became possessed, by his father's death,
of the manor-house of Elmsley, and of the large property
adjoining to it. In the happiness which his wealth gave him
the means of diffusing around him, in the friendly attachment
with which he was regarded by those among whom he now fixed
his residence, he found subjects of interest, and sources of
gratification, which gradually obl