upon a lobby which communicated with my fair cousin's
apartment; a circumstance which divested the room, in my eyes, of the
air of solitude and sadness which would otherwise have characterised it,
to a degree almost painful to one so dejected in spirits as I was.

After such arrangements as I found necessary were completed, we both
went down to the parlour, a large wainscoted room, hung round with grim
old portraits, and, as I was not sorry to see, containing in its ample
grate a large and cheerful fire. Here my cousin had leisure to talk more
at her ease; and from her I learned something of the manners and the
habits of the two remaining members of her family, whom I had not yet
seen.

On my arrival I had known nothing of the family among whom I was come to
reside, except that it consisted of three individuals, my uncle, and his
son and daughter, Lady T----n having been long dead. In addition to
this very scanty stock of information, I shortly learned from my
communicative companion that my uncle was, as I had suspected,
completely retired in his habits, and besides that, having been so far
back as she could well recollect, always rather strict, as reformed
rakes frequently become, he had latterly been growing more gloomily and
sternly religious than heretofore.

Her account of her brother was far less favourable, though she did not
say anything directly to his disadvantage. From all that I could gather
from her, I was led to suppose that he was a specimen of the idle,
coarse-mannered, profligate, low-minded 'squirearchy'--a result which
might naturally have flowed from the circumstance of his being, as it
were, outlawed from society, and driven for companionship to grades
below his own--enjoying, too, the dangerous prerogative of spending much
money.

However, you may easily suppose that I found nothing in my cousin's
communication fully to bear me out in so very decided a conclusion.

I awaited the arrival of my uncle, which was every moment to be
expected, with feelings half of alarm, half of curiosity--a sensation
which I have often since experienced, though to a less degree, when upon
the point of standing for the first time in the presence of one of whom
I have long been in the habit of hearing or thinking with interest.

It was, therefore, with some little perturbation that I heard, first a
slight bustle at the outer door, then a slow step traverse the hall, and
finally witnessed the door open, and my uncl