"You are rather lonely," said the widow. "Yes, yes," replied he; "but I have always been accustomed living alone, being an old bachelor, and wish to remain so. It is better to live a life of singleness than torture both body and soul by marrying a woman who doesn't love you, like the good Sir John Dunfern--a nobleman who lived only some miles from this, and who died lately broken-hearted--who became so infatuated with an upstart of unknown parentage, who lived in Dilworth Castle, with one Lord Dilworth, the previous owner, that he married her offhand, and, what was the result, my good woman?--why she eventually ran off with a poor tutor! and brought the hairs of hoary whiteness of Sir John Dunfern to the grave much sooner than in all probability they would have, had he remained like me." Facing fumes of insult again, thought the listener. And asking after Major Iddesleigh's will, eagerly awaited his reply. Placing one hand upon her shoulder, and pointing with the other, "Behold," said he, "yonder church? that was his last will--Iddesleigh Church. It was only when the jaws of death gaped for their prey that the major was forced to alter his will, having had it previously prepared in favour of his niece, whose whereabouts could never be traced until after his death." "Enough--enough, I must go," said the painful listener, and thanking the old man for his information, which, like her son's, had screwed its bolts of deadly weight more deeply down on the lid of abstract need, turned her back on Audley Hall for ever. CHAPTER XIX. Hope sinks a world of imagination. It in almost every instance never fails to arm the opponents of justice with weapons of friendly defence, and gains their final fight with peaceful submission. Life is too often stripped of its pleasantness by the steps of false assumption, marring the true path of life-long happiness which should be pebbled with principle, piety, purity, and peace. Next morning, after the trying adventure of the lonely outcast, was the scene of wonder at Dilworth Castle. Henry Hawkes, the head gardener under the Marquis of Orland, on approaching the little summer-house in which Irene Iddesleigh so often sat in days of youth, was horrified to find the dead body of a woman, apparently a widow, lying prostrate inside its mossy walls. "Lord, protect me!" shouted poor Hawkes, half distractedly, and hurried to Dilworth Castle to inform the inmates of what he had just seen. They all rushed towards the little rustic building to verify the certainty of the gardener's remarks. There she lay, cold, stiff, and lifeless as Nero, and must have been dead for hours. They advised the authorities, who were soon on the spot. What stinging looks of shame the Marquis cast upon her corpse on being told that it was that of the once beautiful Lady Dunfern--mother of the present heir to Dunfern estate!