While he was thus ruminating, Mrs. Coningsby entered, to lead her uncle's guests to the supper room. Before they obeyed her hospitable summons, the Marquis requested that he and his son might retire to disencumber themselves of their travelling accoutrements; and when they had withdrawn, the Pastor took that interval to inform his niece and daughters, that the noble Spaniards were to be his guests for some days.--He read apart to Mrs. Coningsby, the passage of Baron Hensius's letter, which mentioned that Don Ferdinand d'Osorio, the Marquis's only son, was the primary cause of this visit to England.--On the Marquis's recall from his diplomatic situation in Italy, he stopped a few months at Vienna, where his wife's family reside. In that city, Don Ferdinand was seized with a fever on his spirits, which menaced his life.--Medical skill was exhausted; and as a lost hope, the physicians ordered him to travel. His father knew this darling son had a fatal bond in the Austrian capital; he therefore saw no alternative but to apply secretly to Spain for the royal mandate, to send both father and son on a seemingly official tour to Holland and Great Britain. It arrived, and the travellers set forward. In Holland, Don Ferdinand's disorder re-doubled.--The Amsterdam physicians recommended a sea voyage, and the bracing air of the north; and as the desponding invalid now appeared indifferent to his fate, the Marquis determined on entering Great Britain by Scotland. He knew that Lindisfarne, the _Holy Island_ of unnumbered saints, lay in the way; and full of parental anxiety, he formed a wish, which he communicated to Baron Hensius, of propitiating a peculiar blessing on this part of his tour, by paying his vows at the shrine of Saint Cuthbert.