‘No, my son, I think not! You had better go alone! This is not a time for exhortation or reproof. It is the time for affection and kindness. Your poor cousin will, as you say, feel very desolate, and as if Heaven had forsaken him. Let him find if he has lost a wife he has found a brother. If ever we are to succeed in our plans for him--if ever our hopes of persuading him to enter the Church are to be realised, it is now--now, when he will feel as if the world had given way beneath him. Go down to-night by all means and comfort him as best you can. This marriage was entered into, you tell me, without the consent of the lady’s parents. Possibly, they may be the more set against him in consequence of this event, though it happened from no fault of his own. Let him see that his misfortunes bind us more nearly to him--make us more anxious that he should seek comfort where it is only to be obtained--in the exercise of his religion. Heaven’s workings are very mysterious, my son. I see already in this sad dispensation, a glimmer of hope for your cousin’s future. Perhaps this, and nothing else, would have made him regard your exhortations and my entreaties in a proper light.’ ‘God grant you may be right, father,’ answered Philip. ‘If I could see Frederick fulfilling my good Aunt Alicia’s wishes, and his godfather’s intentions, by entering our Holy Church, and dedicating his money to her use, I should feel my life had not been wasted by devoting it to such a purpose.’ CHAPTER X. Frederick was still bending over the dead body of his wife, when Philip Walcheren entered the little back parlour of the ‘Bottle and Spurs’ that evening. The landlady told him that he had not left the room since the preceding night. ‘Nor has bit nor sup passed his lips, sir, except a cup of coffee, which I made expressly, and took to him this morning. Nor haven’t his clothes been off, neither! I’m sure I don’t know what _is_ to become of the poor gentleman at this rate. He seems just eat up with grief.’ ‘I will go to him,’ said Philip, as he turned the handle of the door and entered his cousin’s presence. Frederick was much in the same position he had at first assumed. He occupied a chair by the side of the table on which the body of poor Jenny lay--his hand clasped hers, and his head was bowed down on the deal boards. ‘Frederick--my dear Frederick,’ said Philip, gently. At the sound of his voice the bereaved husband roused himself, and made a slight deprecatory gesture with his hand. ‘Don’t speak to me--don’t reproach me,’ he answered, bitterly, ‘for I cannot bear it.’ ‘Far be it from me to reproach you, Frederick,’ replied his cousin as he laid his hand on his; ‘on the contrary, I have come to comfort you, as far as lies in my power, under the terrible calamity that has befallen you.’ ‘No one can comfort me, Philip.’