Mr. Erle ceased speaking, and I gave a great sigh of relief. His last words had been uttered with so much feeling that neither my grandfather nor I could interrupt the long silence, as he sat looking dreamily into the fire. When at length he spoke, it was of an entirely different subject, and, after half an hour's conversation, he drank a last glass of the old wine, and bade us good night, wringing my grandfather's hand with more than usual warmth.
I waited almost impatiently until I heard the house-door close, and then, "Who is Mrs. Erle?" I asked.
"Who do you suppose?" my grandfather answered.
"And yet you heard Mr. Erle tell the part about the Countess?"
"No. I dare say I am very stupid; but do tell me," I begged.
"Well, then, my dear, the morning after the races, Erle went to the castle, and the Countess was very kind, as great ladies often are, and he stayed for a week, since she pressed the matter so; and then there was an excursion into Wales, where most untoward things occurred, and the grand finale was a wedding at Lord West's in London."
"Then he married Miss Ferrers!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, my dear, even so. You have never seen the lady, I believe?"
"No, never. Is anything the matter with her?"
"Anything the matter with her? Yes, she is insane. Quite harmless, you know; but having been made with the worst temper in England, this climate has developed it into positive insanity."
"And she lives at home?" I asked, sadly, for it came over me what a tragedy Mr. Erle's life must be.
"Yes, Gerald is more than faithful to her. Ah, Thesta, child, we do not know all the patient endurance of God's men and women in this nineteenth century."
The bells of St. Mary's rang midnight as I lighted my bedroom candle, and kissed the smooth brow of my white-haired hero. "You do not ask what became of Lillie Burton," he said.
"Yes, Satterlee was there years afterwards, and found her Lillie Dunn, with three children clinging to her skirts."
"O, Nathan turned out splendidly, and led the Flury hunt for years. They say his memory is green in ----shire yet."
"Poor Mr. Erle!" I said, summing up the whole story, as I went off to bed.
The traveller who first reaches the Lake of Constance at Lindau, or crosses that sheet of pale green water to one of the ports on the opposite Swiss shore, cannot fail to notice the bold heights to the southward, which thrust themselves between the opening of the Rhine Valley and the long, undulating ridges of the Canton Thurgau. These heights, broken by many a dimly hinted valley and ravine, appear to be the front of an Alpine table-land. Houses and villages, scattered over the steep ascending plane, present themselves distinctly to the eye; the various green of forest and pasture land is rarely interrupted by the gray of rocky walls; and the afternoon sun touches the topmost edge of each successive elevation with a sharp outline of golden light, through the rich gloom of the shaded slopes. Behind and over this region rise the serrated peaks of the Sentis Alp, standing in advance of the farther ice-fields of Glarus, like an outer fortress, garrisoned in summer by the merest forlorn hope of snow.