When I re-entered, I found my aunt looking a little cheerful. She was even having something to eat with her sister--an elderly country-looking woman, the wife of a farmer in a distant shire. Their talk had led them back to old times, to their parents and the friends of their childhood; and the memory of the long dead had comforted her a little over the recent loss; for all true hearts death is a uniting, not a dividing power.
‘I suppose you will be going back to London, Wilfrid?’ said my aunt, who had already been persuaded to pay her sister a visit.
‘I think I had better,’ I answered. ‘When I have a chance of publishing a book, I should like to come and write it, or at least finish it, here, if you will let me.’
‘The place is your own, Wilfrid. Of course I shall be very glad to have you here.’
‘The place is yours as much as mine, aunt,’ I replied. ‘I can’t bear to think that my uncle has no right over it still. I believe he has, and therefore it is yours just the same--not to mention my own wishes in the matter.’
She made no reply, and I saw that both she and her sister were shocked either at my mentioning the dead man, or at my supposing he had any earthly rights left. The next day they set out together, leaving in the house the wife of the head man at the farm, to attend to me until I should return to town. I had purposed to set out the following morning, but I found myself enjoying so much the undisturbed possession of the place, that I remained there for ten days; and when I went, it was with the intention of making it my home as soon as I might: I had grown enamoured of the solitude so congenial to labour. Before I left I arranged my uncle’s papers, and in doing so found several early sketches which satisfied me that he might have distinguished himself in literature if his fate had led him thitherward.
Having given the house in charge to my aunt’s deputy, Mrs Herbert, I at length returned to my lodging in Camden Town. There I found two letters waiting me, the one announcing the serious illness of my aunt, and the other her death. The latter was two days old. I wrote to express my sorrow, and excuse my apparent neglect, and having made a long journey to see her also laid in the earth, I returned to my old home, in order to make fresh arrangements.