e, if she was not too busy; and he
answered that he believed her to be a very good soul, and handy. And if
he ever had been thought to speak in a sense disparishing of her, such
things should not be borne in mind, with great afflictions over us. Mrs.
Price, hearing that I was come, already was on her way to me, and
now glanced at the door for Mr. Stixon to depart, in a manner past
misunderstanding.

"He gives himself such airs!" she said; "sometimes one would think--but
I will not trouble you now with that, Miss Castlewood, or Lady
Castlewood--which do you please to be called, miss? They say that the
barony goes on, when there is no more Viscount."

"I please to be called 'Miss Castlewood,' even if I have any right to be
called that. But don't let us talk of such trifles now. I wish to hear
only of my cousin."

"Well, you know, ma'am, what a sufferer he has been for years. If ever
an angel had pains all over, and one leg compulsory of a walking-stick,
that angel was his late lordship. He would stand up and look at one, and
give orders in that beautiful silvery voice of his, just as if he was
lying on a bed of down. And never a twitch, nor a hitch in his face, nor
his words, nor any other part of him. I assure you, miss, that I have
been quite amazed and overwhelmed with interest while looking at his
poor legs, and thinking--"

"I can quite enter into it. I have felt the same. But please to come to
what has happened lately."

"The very thing I was at the point of doing. Then last Sunday, God alone
knows why, the pain did not come on at all. For the first time for seven
years or more the pain forgot the time-piece. His lordship thought that
the clock was wrong; but waited with his usual patience, though missing
it from the length of custom, instead of being happy. But when it
was come to an hour too late for the proper attack of the enemy, his
lordship sent orders for Stixon's boy to take a good horse and ride to
Pangbourne for a highly respectable lawyer. There was no time to fetch
Mr. Spines, you see, miss, the proper solicitor, who lives in London.
The gentleman from Pangbourne was here by eight o'clock; and then and
there his lordship made his will, to supersede all other wills. He put
it more clearly, the lawyer said, than he himself could have put it, but
not, of course, in such legal words, but doubtless far more beautiful.
Nobody in the house was forgotten; and the rule of law being, it seems,
that those wit