was never solved on the stage of events
at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go behind the scenes a
moment. Morally superstitious as the baronet was, the character of his
mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency in the affairs of
men, and, when the matter was made clear to him, it shook off a weight
of weakness and restored his mental balance; so that from this time he
went about more like the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly
the great truth, that This World is well designed. Nay, he could laugh
on hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck of one of the family
members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy spirit, Algernon's
Leg.

Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen ----.
Not to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property.
After satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir Austin,
moved by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her Ghost
could write words in the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy lady
who had given Richard birth,--brief cold lines, simply telling him his
house would be disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what
heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of soul!
Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a man
fatally stern and implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will act
when they fancy they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned
for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart's yearning
by stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in
the family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting the
sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to
this boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and father.
A few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love her. "Let
this be her penance, not inflicted by me!" Mrs. Doria bowed to the
System for another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow for
herself.

Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,--he with gouty fingers on
a greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small
hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What
he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the
juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot
be performed