Frankland left Plymouth? — that was the first
question. And what delays might they have
encountered afterwards in getting horses?—
that was the second. The housekeeper and
the steward differed irritably in debating these
points; but both agreed that it was necessary
to sit up until midnight, on the chance of the
master and mistress arriving late. The maid,
hearing her sentence of banishment from bed
for the next two hours, pronounced by the
superior authorities, yawned and sighed
mournfully— was reproved by the steward—
and was furnished by the housekeeper with
a book of Hymns to read, to keep up her
spirits.

Twelve o'clock struck, and still the monotonous
beating of the surf, varied occasionally
by those loud, mysterious, cracking noises
which make themselves heard at night in an
old house, were the only audible sounds.
The steward was dozing; the maid was fast
asleep under the soothing influence of the
Hymns; the housekeeper was wide awake,
with her eyes fixed on the window, and her
head shaking forebodingly from time to
time. At the last stroke of the clock she
left her chair, listened attentively, and still
hearing nothing, shook the maid irritably by
the shoulder, and stamped on the floor to
arouse the steward.

"We may go to bed," she said. "They
are not coming."

"Did you say they were not coming at
all?" asked the steward, sleepily setting his
wig straight.

"No; I said they were not coming," answered
the housekeeper sharply. "But it
wouldn't surprise me, for one, if we never set
eyes on them after all our trouble in getting
the place ready. This is the second time
they have disappointed us. The first time,
the Captain's death stood in the way. What
stops them now? Another death? I shouldn't
wonder if it was."

"No more should I," assented the steward
with a yawn.

"Another death!" repeated the housekeeper,
superstitiously. "If it is another
death, I should take it, in their place, as a
warning to keep away from the house."

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. MRS. JAZEPH.

IF, instead of hazarding the guess that a
second death stood in the way of Mr. and
Mrs. Frankland's arrival at Porthgenna, the
housekeeper had, by way of variety,
surmised, this time, that a birth was the obstacle
which delayed them, she might have
established her character as a wise woman, by
hitting at random on the actual truth. Her
master and mistress had started from London
on the ninth of May, and had got through
the greater part of their railway journey,
when they were suddenly obliged to stop, on
Mrs. Frankland's account, at the station of a
small town in Somersetshire. The little
visitor who was destined to increase the
domestic responsibilities of the young married
couple, had chosen to enter on the scene in
the character of a robust boy-baby, a month
earlier than he had been expected, and had
modestly preferred to make his first appearance
in a small Somersetshire inn, rather
than wait to be ceremoniously welcomed to
life in the great house of Porthgenna, which
he was one day to inherit.

Very few events had ever produced a
greater sensation in the town of West
Winston, than the one small event of the
unexpected stoppage of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland's
journey at that place. Never, since
the last election, had the landlord and landlady
of the Tiger's Head Hotel bustled about
their house in such a fever of excitement, as
possessed them, when Mr. Frankland's servant
and Mrs. Frankland's maid drew up at
the door in a fly from the station, to announce
that their master and mistress were behind,
and that the largest and quietest rooms in the
hotel were wanted immediately, under the
most unexpected and most interesting
circumstances. Never, since he had triumphantly
passed his examination, had young
Mr. Orridge, the new doctor, who had started
in life by purchasing the West Winston
practice, felt such a thrill of pleasurable
agitation pervade him from top to toe, as
when he heard that the wife of a blind
gentleman of great fortune had been taken
ill on the railway journey from London to
Devonshire at the West Winston station,
and required all that his skill and attention
could do for her, without a moment's delay.
Never, since the last archery meeting and
fancy fair, had the ladies of the town been
favoured with such an all-absorbing subject
for conversation as was now afforded to them
by Mrs. Frankland's mishap. Fabulous
accounts of the wife's beauty and the husband's
fortune poured from the original source of
the Tiger's Head, and trickled through the
highways and byways of the little town.
There were a dozen different reports, one
more elaborately false than the other, about
Mr. Frankland's blindness, and the cause of
it; about the lamentable condition in which
his wife had arrived at the hotel; and about
the painful sense of responsibility which had
unnerved the inexperienced Mr. Orridge
from the first moment when he set eyes on
"his fashionable and lovely patient." It was
not till eight o'clock in the evening that the
public mind was relieved at last from all
suspense by an announcement that the child
was born, and screaming lustily; that the
mother was wonderfully well, considering all
things; and that Mr. Orridge had not only
kept possession of his nerves, but had covered
himself with distinction by the skill, tenderness,
and attention with which he had
performed his duties.

On the next day, and the next, and for
a week after that, the accounts were still
favourable. But on the tenth day, a catastrophe