to deplore Sir Brian's condition, accounts of
whose seizure of course had been despatched to the Kehl party, and to
lament that a worldly man as he was should have such an affliction, so
near the grave and so little prepared for it. Here honest Kew, however,
held out. "Every man for himself, mother," says he. "Sir Brian was bred
up very strictly, perhaps too strictly as a young man. Don't you know
that that good Colonel, his elder brother, who seems to me about the
most honest and good old gentleman I ever met in my life, was driven
into rebellion and all sorts of wild courses by old Mrs. Newcome's
tyranny over him? As for Sir Brian, he goes to church every Sunday: has
prayers in the family every day: I'm sure has led a hundred times better
life than I have, poor old Sir Brian. I often have thought, mother, that
though our side was wrong, you could not be altogether right, because I
remember how my tutor, and Mr. Bonner, and Dr. Laud, when they used to
come down to us at Kewbury, used to make themselves so unhappy about
other people." So the widow withdrew her unhappiness about Sir Brian;
she was quite glad to hope for the best regarding that invalid.

With some fears yet regarding her son,--for many of the books with which
the good lady travelled could not be got to interest him; at some he
would laugh outright,--with fear mixed with the maternal joy that he
was returned to her, and had quitted his old ways; with keen feminine
triumph, perhaps, that she had won him back, and happiness at his daily
mending health, all Lady Walham's hours were passed in thankful and
delighted occupation. George Barnes kept the Newcomes acquainted with
the state of his brother's health. The skilful surgeon from Strasbourg
reported daily better and better of him, and the little family were
living in great peace and contentment, with one subject of dread,
however, hanging over the mother of the two young men, the arrival of
Lady Kew, as she was foreboding, the fierce old mother-in-law who had
worsted Lady Walham in many a previous battle.

It was what they call the summer of St. Martin, and the weather was
luckily very fine; Kew could presently be wheeled into the garden of
the hotel, whence he could see the broad turbid current of the swollen
Rhine: the French bank fringed with alders, the vast yellow fields
behind them, the great avenue of poplars stretching away to the Alsatian
city, and its purple minster yonder. Good Lady Walham was fo