The Pit Town Coronet: A Family Mystery, Volume 3 (of 3)Wills, C. J. (Charles James)
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The Pit Town Coronet: A Family Mystery, Volume 3 (of 3)
Wills, C. J. (Charles James)
England -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction
Mrs. Haggard and her husband, both in deep mourning, sat in the special
boudoir at Walls End Castle which had been furnished and set apart for
his grand-nephew's wife on her first arrival years ago by old Lord Pit
Town. Haggard looked pale and weary, and well he might, for he had gone
straight to Monte Carlo and had come straight back, stopping only
forty-eight hours there, just time enough to lay Lucy Warrender in her
grave. He had not gone alone; at his wife's insistance he had taken the
young Lucius with him. He had been astonished at the determined manner
in which Georgie pressed this arrangement upon him; he yielded, though
with a bad grace. When he reached the Hotel de Russie, both he and
Lucius had declined to look on the face of the dead woman. Haggard had a
long interview with Fanchette, and then he called upon the Commissary of
Police. The night before his mother was laid in her grave, Lucius
Haggard, unknown to his companion, who was shut up in his room writing,
visited the Rooms, won a couple of thousand francs, and thoroughly
enjoyed himself.
The next day the two men stood by the side of the shallow grave; graves
are shallow in Monaco, for the ground is very rocky. A wandering English
clergyman, of more than doubtful reputation, gabbled through the service
for the burial of the dead. The stones and bits of rock rattled upon the
coffin with a hollow sound, for the grave-digger didn't trouble himself
much about the feelings of the relatives of the foreign heretic.
"I think my aunt Lucy went off tremendously in the last year," said
young Lucius to his companion as they left the cemetery.
"Let her rest, boy, let her rest," was all the answer he got.
There was a sort of grey look of horror about Haggard's face, that the
boy put down to grief for the departed. He was a hard-hearted youth, and
was frankly surprised that Haggard showed any feeling at all.
The husband and wife, as we have said, sat in Georgie's boudoir. This
was what passed between them.
"Your cousin seems to have made a nice mess of it," said Haggard. "Why
she was penniless."
"Well, that wouldn't much matter, Reginald; she could have written to
Coutts' for more."
"Gad, they write me that she drew out the last farthing she had in the
world two months ago. And that woman Fanchette, who is a very bad lot
indeed, or I'm very much, mistaken, told me she pawned her earrings the
day before she--died."
Georgie nodded. "I remember them, a pair of large single-stone earrings.
I fancy she must have bought them when she first came into her property.
I saw them quite by chance last summer, for the first time; and when I
admired them, she said that she had had them for years, that they had
been her first folly and had cost her dear."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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