seven weeks ago; and I know that her Ladyship wrote, urgently entreating
you to come out to Italy." Twining continued to detail, in his own
peculiar and fitful style, various circumstances about Lord Lackington's
last illness. But Beecher never heard a word of it, but stood stunned
and stupefied by the news. It would be too tangled a web were we to
inquire into the complicated and confused emotions which then swayed his
heart. The immense change in his own fortunes, his sudden accession to
rank, wealth, and station, came, accompanied by traits of brotherly love
and affection bestowed on him long, long ago, when he was a Harrow boy,
and "Lack" came down to see him; and then, in after life, the many
kind things he had done for him,--helping him out of this or that
difficulty,--services little estimated at the time, but now remembered
with more than mere gratitude. "Poor Lackington! and that I should not
haver been with you!" muttered he; and then, as if the very words had
set another chord in vibration, he started as he thought that he had
been duped. Davis knew it all; Davis had intercepted the letters. It was
for this he had detained him weeks long in the lonely isolation of that
Rhenish village. It was for this his whole manner had undergone such a
marked change to him. Hence the trustfulness with which he burned the
forged acceptances; the liberality with which he supplied him with
money, and then--the marriage! "How they have done me!" cried he, in
an agony of bitterness,--"how they have done me! The whole thing was
concerted,--a plant from the very beginning; and _she_ was in it!" While
he thus continued to mutter to himself imprecations upon his own folly,
Twining led him away, and imperceptibly induced him to stroll along one
of the unfrequented alleys. At first Beecher's questions were all
about his brother's illness,--how it began, what they called it, how it
progressed. Then he asked after his sister-in-law,--where she then was,
and how. By degrees he adverted to Lackington's affairs; his will,--what
he had left, and to whom. Twining was one of the executors, and
could tell him everything. The Viscount had provided handsomely, not
extravagantly, for his widow, and left everything to his brother! "Poor
Lackington, I knew he loved me always!" Twining entered into a somewhat
complicated narrative of a purchase the late Viscount had made, or
intended to make, in Ireland,--an encumbered estate,--but Beecher paid
no a