"Oh, my love--my love! Dead! dead!"
The only one who heard the words was Anne Ashton. The countess-dowager
caught the last.
"Who is dead? What is this mystery?" she asked, unceremoniously lifting
her satin dress, with the intention of going out to see, and her head
began to nod--perhaps with apprehension--as if she had the palsy. "You
want to force us away. No, thank you; not until I've come to the bottom
of this."
"Let us tell them," cried young Carteret, in his boyish impulse, "and
then perhaps they will go. An accident has happened to Lord Hartledon,
ma'am, and these men have brought him home."
"He--_he's_ not dead?" asked the old woman, in changed tones.
Alas! poor Lord Hartledon was indeed dead. The Irish labourers, in
passing near the mill, had detected the body in the water; rescued it,
and brought it home.
The countess-dowager's grief commenced rather turbulently. She talked and
shrieked, and danced round, exactly as if she had been a wild Indian. It
was so intensely ludicrous, that the occupants of the hall gazed in
silence.
"Here to-day, and gone to-morrow!" she sobbed. "Oh--o--o--o--o--o--oh!"
"Nay," cried young Carteret, "here to-day, and gone _now_. Poor fellow!
it is awful."
"And you have done it!" she cried, turning her grief upon the astonished
boy. "You! What business had you to allure him off again in that
miserable boat, once he had got home?"
"Don't trample me down, please," he indignantly returned; "I am as cut up
as you can be.
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