"Yes! you can find comfort in a baby's arms--that is a blessing. My comfort was to see my beloved in his bloody shroud--shot through the heart--shot through the heart! Well, the inquest will find out something to-morrow, I hope; but I want you to go with me to-morrow morning, as soon as it is light, to the Kieve." "What for?" "To see the spot where he died." "What will be the good, Jessie? I know the place too well; it has been in my mind all this evening." "There will be some good, perhaps. At any rate, I want you to go with me; and if there ever was any reality in your love, if you are not merely a beautiful piece of mechanism, with a heart that beats by clockwork, you will go." "If you wish it I will go." "As soon as it is light--say at seven o'clock." "I will not go till after breakfast. I want the business of the house to go on just as calmly as if this calamity had never happened. I don't want any one to be able to say, 'Mrs. Tregonell is in despair at the loss of her old lover.'" "In fact you want people to suppose that you never cared for him!" "They cannot suppose that, when I was once so proud of my love. All I want is that no one should think I loved him too well after I was a wife and mother. I will give no occasion for scandal." "Didn't I say that you were a handsome automaton?" "I do not want any one to say hard things of me when I am dead--hard things that my son may hear." "When you are dead! You talk as if you thought you were to die soon. You are of the stuff that wears to threescore-and-ten, and even beyond the Psalmist's limit. There is no friction for natures of your calibre. When Werther had shot himself, Charlotte went on cutting bread and butter, don't you know? It was her nature to be proper, and good, and useful, and never to give offence--her nature to cut bread and butter," concluded Jessie, laughing bitterly. Christabel stayed with her for an hour, talking to her, consoling her, speaking hopefully of that unknown world, so fondly longed for, so piously believed in by the woman who had learnt her creed at Mrs. Tregonell's knees. Many tears were shed by Christabel during that hour of mournful talk; but not one by Jessie Bridgeman. Hers was a dry-eyed grief. "After breakfast then we will walk to the Kieve," said Jessie, as Christabel left her. "Would it be too much to ask you to make it as early as you can?" "I will go the moment I am free. Good-night, dear." CHAPTER III. DUEL OR MURDER? All the household appeared at breakfast next morning; even poor Dopsy, who felt that she could not nurse her grief in solitude any longer. "It's behaving too much as if you were his widow," Mopsy had told her, somewhat harshly; and then there was the task of packing, since they were to leave Mount Royal at eleven, in order to be at Launceston in time for the one o'clock train. This morning's breakfast was less silent than the dinner of yesterday. Everybody felt as if Mr. Hamleigh had been dead at least a week.