"Unfortunate? It was a narrow chance by which to lose thirty thousand a year!" said Downie, grinding his teeth, while his eyes gleamed like two bits of grey glass in moonlight. "There is some mystery about Richard's life; moreover, he wears a woman's miniature at his neck." "Young--is she?" "Well--yes--she seems so." "And pretty?" added Mrs. Downie, glancing at herself in a mirror. "Very." "His intended, perhaps?" "I hope she is not more than that; but time must soon show now." And over the porte-cochère of Rhoscadzhel there now hung a vast lozenge-shaped hatchment or funeral escutcheon, the sight of which would have delighted him, whose memory it was meant to honour, being the achievement of a bachelor peer, representing the arms of Lamorna in a shield complete--the demi-horse _argent_ of the Trevelyans rising from the sea; over all, the baron's coronet, crest, motto, and mantling, collared by the Orders of the Bath and St. Anne; and after some old fashion, retained still only in Germany, Scotland, and France, the herald-painter had depicted at each corner a death-head, while all the black interstices were _powdered with tears_. CHAPTER V. PORTHELLICK VILLA. More than forty miles distant from Rhoscadzhel, on that part of the Cornish coast which is washed by the waves of the Bristol Channel, at a place named Porthellick, or the Cove of Willows, was a beautiful white-walled villa, built in the Greek style of architecture, with an Ionic portico of six carved and painted wooden pillars. Its windows opened in the French fashion, and descended to the floor; luxuriant creepers, jasmines, and sweet brier, were trained on green trellis-work around it, and rare plants of gorgeous colours grew in stone vases, which were placed in a double row along the smooth gravelled terrace, from which the basement of the cottage rose--for the villa was a cottage in character, being but a one storeyed dwelling, though spacious and handsome, and having a noble conservatory and coach-house and stabling, and an approach of half a mile in length, bordered by a double line of those magnificent willows from which the place took its name, and affording, from the principal windows in front, an ample view of the sea, with ever and anon, a white sail lingering in the dim blue distance, or a passing steamer, with its pennant of smoke, streaming astern, as it sped towards Ireland or the Isle of Man. On the evening of that day when Lord Lamorna died so suddenly, a lady was standing under the portico of this house, looking anxiously, not seaward, but inland, towards the willow avenue, by which her residence was approached from the road that leads by Stratton, among the hills, towards Camelford and Wadebridge, near the rocky valley of Hanter-Gantick. The lady looked repeatedly at her watch, consulted a railway time-table, and entered the house, only to return to her post, and bend her eyes in anxious gaze along the avenue.