There was a long pause, during which Mrs. Basil went to the cellaret, and pouring out a glass of sherry, put it to her tenant’s lips.

“Do you feel better now?” said she, when Harry had drunk it.

“Yes, yes; much better.  But that skull—­oh, horrible! it rolled from him to me.  What an omen on your very threshold!  Heaven guard my Charles from evil!”

“This is weakness, Mrs. Coe.  The skull is harmless; and it rolled because your son upset it.”

“Yes, my son,” gasped the other, trembling.  “It is for him I fear.  It augurs death—­death—­death!”

There was a ring at the front-door, decisive, sharp, and resonant.

“Great Heaven!” cried Harry; “if it should be he himself!  Hide me away; put me out of sight.”  Her terror was piteous to behold:  she shook in every limb.

“It is the post,” said Mrs. Basil, contemptuously; and she was right.  The servant brought in a letter for her mistress.

“I don’t know the hand,” mused she.  “Black-bordered, and black-sealed too.”  She opened it without excitement, and read it through:  it was but a few lines.

“Your omen has proved true for once, Mrs. Coe,” said she, in quiet tones.  “This speaks of death.”

“Whose death?” cried Harry.

“My husband’s, Richard’s father.  Carew of Crompton died last night.”

There was no sorrow in the aged woman’s face:  a gravity, unmixed with tenderness, possessed it.  Carew was naught to her, and had been naught for twoscore years.  But the tide of memory was at its flow within her brain; and because the Past is Past it touches us.  This man had loved her once, after his own scornful manner, when he was young, and before power and selfishness had made him stone.  He had been the father of her only son, and now he was Dead.

“I am so sorry,” said Harry, not quite knowing what to say.

“There is no need for sorrow,” replied the other, quietly.  “Let us go up stairs and finish our work.”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

WITCHERY.

Carew of Crompton was really dead, as men said, “at last,” not that he had been long dying, or was an old man, but that he had eventually succumbed to one of those deadly risks to which he had so often voluntarily exposed himself.  On the occasion which had been fatal to him he had started from home one frosty morning at the gallop, with a cigar in his mouth, the reins on his horse’s neck, and both his hands in his pockets, and had been pitched off and broken his neck within half a mile of his own door.  His chaplain, who had dispatched the news to Mrs. Basil, had been riding by his side at the very moment.  “He was a good friend to me,” was the laconic remark that poor Parson Whymper had added to the bare intelligence.