第82章 MISS MORRIS AND THE STRANGER.(11)

Our kind-hearted customer was no less a person than Sir Gervase Damian, of Garrum Park, Sussex--with landed property in our county as well! He had made himself (through the rector, no doubt) far better acquainted than I was with the true state of my mother's health. In four months from the memorable day when the great man had taken tea with us, my time had come to be alone in the world. I have no courage to dwell on it; my spirits sink, even at this distance of time, when I think of myself in those days. The good rector helped me with his advice--I wrote to Sir Gervase Damian.

A change had come over his life as well as mine in the interval since we had met.

Sir Gervas e had married for the second time--and, what was more foolish still, perhaps, at his age, had married a young woman.

She was said to be consumptive, and of a jealous temper as well.

Her husband's only child by his first wife, a son and heir, was so angry at his father's second marriage that he left the house.

The landed property being entailed, Sir Gervase could only express his sense of his son's conduct by making a new will, which left all his property in money to his young wife.