"There is no need for sorrow," replied the other, quietly. "Let us go up stairs and finish our work." CHAPTER XXXVII. WITCHERY. Carew of Crompton was really dead, as men said, "at last," not that he had been long dying, or was an old man, but that he had eventually succumbed to one of those deadly risks to which he had so often voluntarily exposed himself. On the occasion which had been fatal to him he had started from home one frosty morning at the gallop, with a cigar in his mouth, the reins on his horse's neck, and both his hands in his pockets, and had been pitched off and broken his neck within half a mile of his own door. His chaplain, who had dispatched the news to Mrs. Basil, had been riding by his side at the very moment. "He was a good friend to me," was the laconic remark that poor Parson Whymper had added to the bare intelligence. To judge by the regretful excitement in the Midlands, Carew might have been a good friend to every body. The news was at once telegraphed to town, and appeared in the evening papers. The public interest in his mad freaks had of late years grown somewhat faint--his extravagances were, perforce, on a less splendid scale--but his death revived it. "So that mad Carew has killed himself, after all," was the observation frequently overheard that evening, as acquaintance met acquaintance on their homeward way from business. "Well, he's had his whack of most things," was the reply of the philosophers; "He has not left much to tempt his heirs to be extravagant, I reckon," of the cynics; "He was a deuced good fellow at bottom, I believe," remarked those who were secretly desirous of earning the same eulogium for themselves; "He was altogether wrong at top," answered the charitable. Solomon Coe came home to his new abode in such a state of elation that it even made him communicative to his wife. Mrs. Basil happened to be with her in the drawing-room, but he only acknowledged her presence by a hasty nod. "Well, what d'ye think, Carew of Crompton, that was your father's landlord and mine"--Solomon never said "ours" with reference to property--"has broken his neck at last!" Of course the very name of Carew was a sore subject between man and wife, on account of Richard Yorke's connection with him; but it suited Solomon's purpose on this occasion to ignore that circumstance. It would be necessary for some time to come to allude to the Crompton property more or less, and it was just as well to begin at once; it was also less embarrassing to do so in the presence of a third person. "Yes, Solomon, I knew Mr. Carew was dead," said Harry, gravely. The next instant she turned scarlet with the consciousness of her thoughtless indiscretion.