eat lonely wood,
where my darling father and mother lie. Oh, how dreadful on nights like
this, to think of them--a vault!--damp, and dark, and solitary--under the
storm.'

Cousin Monica looked wistfully in the same direction, and with a short sigh
she said--

'We think too much of the poor remains, and too little of the spirit which
lives for ever. I am sure they are happy.' And she sighed again. 'I wish
I dare hope as confidently for myself. Yes, Maud, it is sad. We are such
materialists, we can't help feeling so. We forget how well it is for us
that our present bodies are not to last always. They are constructed for a
time and place of trouble--plainly mere temporary machines that wear out,
constantly exhibiting failure and decay, and with such tremendous capacity
for pain. The body lies alone, and so it ought, for it is plainly its good
Creator's will; it is only the tabernacle, not the person, who is clothed
upon after death, Saint Paul says, "with a house which is from heaven." So
Maud, darling, although the thought will trouble us again and again, there
is nothing in it; and the poor mortal body is only the cold ruin of a
habitation which _they_ have forsaken before we do. So this great wind, you
say, is blowing toward us from the wood there. If so, Maud, it is blowing
from Bartram-Haugh, too, over the trees and chimneys of that old place, and
the mysterious old man, who is quite right in thinking I don't like him;
and I can fancy him an old enchanter in his castle, waving his familiar
spirits on the wind to fetch and carry tidings of our occupations here.'

I lifted my head and listened to the storm, dying away in the distance
sometimes--sometimes swelling and pealing around and above us--and through
the dark and solitude my thoughts sped away to Bartram-Haugh and Uncle
Silas.

'This letter,' I said at last, 'makes me feel differently. I think he is a
stern old man--is he?'

'It is twenty years, now, since I saw him,' answered Lady Knollys. 'I did
not choose to visit at his house.'

'Was that before the dreadful occurrence at Bartram-Haugh?'

'Yes--before, dear. He was not a reformed rake, but only a ruined one then.
Austin was very good to him. Mr. Danvers says it is quite unaccountable how
Silas can have made away with the immense sums he got from his brother from
time to time without benefiting himself in the least. But, my dear, he
played; and trying to help a man who plays, and is unlucky--and some me