"If you think so, Martha, say no more. I'll--go as well now as another time--and, as you say, sooner or later it must be done."
"He's lookin' very nice and like himself," mumbled the old woman, as she led the way.
At the open door of Sir Reginald's room stood Mr. Plumes, in professional black with a pensive and solemn countenance, intending politely to do the honours.
"Thank you, Sir," said the old woman graciously, taking the lead in the proceedings. "This is the young master, and he won't mind troublin' you, Mr. Plumes. If you please to go to my room, Sir, the third door on the right, you'll find tea made, Sir; and Mr. Crozier, I think, will be there."
And having thus disposed of the stranger, they entered the room, in which candles were burning.
Sir Reginald had, as it were, already made dispositions for his final journey. He had left his bed, and lay instead, in the handsomely upholstered coffin which stood on tressels beside it. Thin and fixed were the cold, earthly features that looked upward from their white trimmings. Sir Richard Arden checked his step and held his breath as he came in sight of these stern lineaments. The pale light that surrounds the dead face of the martyr was wanting here: in its stead, upon selfish lines and contracted features, a shadow stood.
Mrs. Tansey, with a feather-brush placed near, drove away a fly that was trying to alight on the still face.
"I mind him when he was a boy," she said, with a groan and a shake of the head. "There was but six years between us, and the life that's ended is but a dream, all like yesterday--nothing to look back on; and, I'm sure, if there's rest for them that has been troubled on earth, he's happy now: a blessed change 'twill be."
"Ay, it's well to know that in time: the young seldom does," she answered sardonically.
"I'll go, Martha. I'll return to the oak-room. I wish my uncle were come."
"Well, you have took your last look, and that's but decent, and---- Dear me, Master Richard, you do look bad!"
"I feel a little faint, Martha. I'll go there; and will you give me a glass of sherry?"
He waited at the room door, while Martha nimbly ran to her room, and returned with some sherry and a wine-glass. He had hardly taken a glass, and begun to feel himself better, when David Arden's step was heard approaching from the hall. He greeted his nephew and Martha in a hushed undertone, as he might in church; and then, as people will enter such rooms, he passed in and crossed with a very soft tread, and said a word or two in whispers. You would have thought that Sir Reginald was tasting the sweet slumber of precarious convalescence, so tremendously does death simulate sleep.