England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
That mystery and secret came out, too, in process of time. Miss Galindo
had been to Warwick, some years before I arrived at Hanbury, on some
kind of business or shopping, which can only be transacted in a county
town. There was an old Westmoreland connection between her and Mrs.
Trevor, though I believe the latter was too young to have been made
aware of her brother’s offer to Miss Galindo at the time when it took
place; and such affairs, if they are unsuccessful, are seldom spoken
about in the gentleman’s family afterwards. But the Gibsons and Galindos
had been county neighbours too long for the connection not to be kept
up between two members settled far away from their early homes. Miss
Galindo always desired her parcels to be sent to Doctor Trevor’s, when
she went to Warwick for shopping purchases. If she were going any
journey, and the coach did not come through Warwick as soon as she
arrived (in my lady’s coach or otherwise) from Hanbury, she went to
Doctor Trevor’s to wait. She was as much expected to sit down to the
household meals as if she had been one of the family; and in after-years
it was Mrs. Trevor who managed her repository business for her.
So, on the day I spoke of, she had gone to Doctor Trevor’s to rest, and
possibly to dine. The post in those times came in at all hours of the
morning; and Doctor Trevor’s letters had not arrived until after his
departure on his morning round. Miss Galindo was sitting down to dinner
with Mrs. Trevor and her seven children, when the Doctor came in. He was
flurried and uncomfortable, and hurried the children away as soon as he
decently could. Then (rather feeling Miss Galindo’s presence an
advantage, both as a present restraint on the violence of his wife’s
grief, and as a consoler when he was absent on his afternoon round), he
told Mrs. Trevor of her brother’s death. He had been taken ill on
circuit, and had hurried back to his chambers in London, only to die.
She cried terribly; but Doctor Trevor said afterwards, he never noticed
that Miss Galindo cared much about it one way or another. She helped him
to soothe his wife, promised to stay with her all the afternoon instead
of returning to Hanbury, and afterwards offered to remain with her while
the Doctor went to attend the funeral. When they heard of the old
love-story between the dead man and Miss Galindo,--brought up by mutual
friends in Westmoreland, in the review which we are all inclined to take
of the events of a man’s life when he comes to die,--they tried to
remember Miss Galindo’s speeches and ways of going on during this visit.
She was a little pale, a little silent; her eyes were sometimes swollen,
and her nose red; but she was at an age when such appearances are
generally attributed to a bad cold in the head, rather than to any more
sentimental reason. They felt towards her as towards an old friend, a
kindly, useful, eccentric old maid. She did not expect more, or wish
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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