rd Luxellian, and a Mr. Coole,
coroner for the division (who had been attending at Castle Boterel that
very day, and was having an after-dinner chat with the doctor when Lord
Luxellian arrived); next came two female nurses and some idlers.

Mr. Granson, after a cursory examination, pronounced the woman dead from
suffocation, induced by intense pressure on the respiratory organs;
and arrangements were made that the inquiry should take place on the
following morning, before the return of the coroner to St. Launce's.

Shortly afterwards the house of the widow was deserted by all its living
occupants, and she abode in death, as she had in her life during the
past two years, entirely alone.

Chapter XXXIV

'Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.'

Sixteen hours had passed. Knight was entering the ladies' boudoir at The
Crags, upon his return from attending the inquest touching the death of
Mrs. Jethway. Elfride was not in the apartment.

Mrs. Swancourt made a few inquiries concerning the verdict and
collateral circumstances. Then she said--

'The postman came this morning the minute after you left the house.
There was only one letter for you, and I have it here.'

She took a letter from the lid of her workbox, and handed it to him.
Knight took the missive abstractedly, but struck by its appearance
murmured a few words and left the room.

The letter was fastened with a black seal, and the handwriting in which
it was addressed had lain under his eyes, long and prominently, only the
evening before.

Knight was greatly agitated, and looked about for a spot where he might
be secure from interruption. It was the season of heavy dews, which
lay on the herbage in shady places all the day long; nevertheless, he
entered a small patch of neglected grass-plat enclosed by the shrubbery,
and there perused the letter, which he had opened on his way thither.

The handwriting, the seal, the paper, the introductory words, all had
told on the instant that the letter had come to him from the hands of
the widow Jethway, now dead and cold. He had instantly understood that
the unfinished notes which caught his eye yesternight were intended for
nobody but himself. He had remembered some of the words of Elfride
in her sleep on the steamer, that somebody was not to tell him of
something, or it would be her ruin--a circumstance hitherto deemed so
trivial and meaningless that he had well-nigh forgotten