Benjamin, with a look of
dismay. "You mean that place?"

"Yes. I want to see the room in which she died; I want to go all over
the house."

Benjamin crossed his hands resignedly on his lap. "I try to understand
the new generation," said the old man, sadly; "but I can't manage it.
The new generation beats me."

I sat down to write to Mr. Playmore about the visit to Gleninch. The
house in which the tragedy had occurred that had blighted my husband's
life was, to my mind, the most interesting house on the habitable globe.
The prospect of visiting Gleninch had, indeed (to tell the truth),
strongly influenced my resolution to consult the Edinburgh lawyer. I
sent my note to Mr. Playmore by a messenger, and received the kindest
reply in return. If I would wait until the afternoon, he would get the
day's business done, and would take us to Gleninch in his own carriage.

Benjamin's obstinacy--in its own quiet way, and on certain occasions
only--was quite a match for mine. He had privately determined, as one of
the old generation, to have nothing to do with Gleninch. Not a word on
the subject escaped him until Mr. Playmore's carriage was at the hotel
door. At that appropriate moment Benjamin remembered an old friend of
his in Edinburgh. "Will you please to excuse me, Valeria? My friend's
name is Saunders; and he will take it unkindly of me if I don't dine
with him to-day."

Apart from the associations that I connected with it, there was nothing
to interest a traveler at Gleninch.

The country around was pretty and well cultivated, and nothing more.
The park was, to an English eye, wild and badly kept. The house had been
built within the last seventy or eighty years. Outside, it was as bare
of all ornament as a factory, and as gloomily heavy in effect as a
prison. Inside, the deadly dreariness, the close, oppressive solitude
of a deserted dwelling wearied the eye and weighed on the mind, from the
roof to the basement. The house had been shut up since the time of the
Trial. A lonely old couple, man and wife, had the keys and the charge
of it. The man shook his head in silent and sorrowful disapproval of our
intrusion when Mr. Playmore ordered him to open the doors and shutters,
and let the light in on the dark, deserted place. Fires were burning
in the library and the picture-gallery, to preserve the treasures which
they contained from the damp. It was not easy, at first, to look at the
cheerful blaze without fancying that