Now I wondered and eagerly yearned to know whether my father, at such a time, and in such a state of loneliness, might not have been led to impart to his cousin and host and protector the dark mystery which lay at the bottom of his own conduct. Knowing how resolute and stern he was, and doubtless then imbittered by the wreck of love and life, I thought it more probable that he had kept silence even toward so near a relative, especially as he had seen very little of his cousin Herbert till he had found him thus. Moreover, my grandfather and the Dean had spent little brotherly love on each other, having had a life-long feud about a copy-hold furze brake of nearly three-quarters of an acre, as Betsy remembered to have heard her master say. To go on, however, with what Mrs. Price was saying. She knew scarcely any thing about my father, because she was too young at that time to be called into the counsels of the servants' hall, for she scarcely was thirty-five yet, as she declared, and she certainly did not look forty. But all about the present Lord Castlewood she knew better than any body else, perhaps, because she had been in the service of his wife, and, indeed, her chief attendant. Then, having spoken of her master's wife, Mrs. Price caught herself up, and thenceforth called her only his “lady.” Mr. Herbert Castlewood, who had minded his business for so many years, and kept himself aloof from ladies, spending all his leisure in good literature, at this time of life and in this state of health (for the shock he had received struck inward), fell into an accident tenfold worse--the fatal accident of love. And this malady raged the more powerfully with him on account of breaking out so late in life. In one of the picture-galleries at Florence, or some such place, Mrs. Price declared, he met with a lady who made all the pictures look cold and dull and dead to him. A lovely young creature she must have been (as even Mrs. Price, who detested her, acknowledged), and to the eyes of a learned but not keen man as good as lovely. My father was gone to look after me, and fetch me out of England, but even if he had been there, perhaps he scarcely could have stopped it; for this Mr. Castlewood, although so quiet, had the family fault of tenacity.