There was no doubt in her mind, only a dreadful certainty. She rushed from the room without a word, and down to the hall, where her father appeared at the same moment, summoned by the loud peal of the bell.
Some farm-labourers, collecting seaweed on the beach had found the Squire of Penwyn, crushed to death among the jagged rocks, rider and horse lying together in one mangled mass.
The trampled and broken ground above showed the force of the shock when horse and rider went down over the sharp edge of the cliff.
A fate so obvious seemed to require no explanation. Mr. Penwyn had gone for his gallop across the moor, as he had announced his intention of doing, and betrayed by the thickening mists of an autumnal evening, his brain more or less confused by the grief and agitation he had undergone, he had lost ken of that familiar ground and had galloped straight at the cliff. This was the conclusion of Sir Nugent and Viola, and subsequently of the world in general. The only curious circumstance in the whole business was the Squire’s use of his spur, a punishment he had never been known to inflict upon Tarpan before that fatal ride. This was commented upon in the stable, and formed the subject of various nods and significant shoulder shrugs, finally resulting in the dictum that the Squire had been off his head, poor chap, after losing his pretty wife.
So, after an inquest and verdict of accidental death, Madge Penwyn’s early grave was opened, and he who had loved her with an unmeasured love was laid beside her in that peaceful restingplace.
Justina did not deprive little Nugent of his too early inherited estate. A compromise was effected between the infant’s next friend, Sir Nugent Bellingham, and Justina’s next friend, Maurice Clissold, and the baby-squire kept his land and state, while Justina became proprietress of the mines, the royalties, upon which, according to Messrs. Pergament, were worth three thousand a year. Great was the excitement in the Royal Albert Theatre when the young lady who had made so successful a _debut_ in ‘No Cards’ retired, on her inheritance of a fortune.
There was a quiet wedding, one November morning, in one of the Bloomsbury churches—a wedding at which Matthew Elgood gave the bride away, and Martin Trevanard was best man—a quiet, but not less enjoyable, wedding breakfast in the Bloomsbury lodging, and then a parting, at which Mr. Elgood, affected at once by grief and Moselle, wept copiously.