He thought of her, lying dead; and then of her poor little motherless and fatherless baby, whom, if she had any consciousness in her death-hour, it must have been a sore pang to her to leave behind.  And the tears gathered again and again in the good man’s eyes, shutting out from his vision all the beauty of the spring.

He reached the grand Italian portico, built by some former earl with a taste for that style, and yet harmonizing well with the smooth lawn, bounded by a circle of magnificent trees, through which came glimpses of the glittering loch.  The great doors used almost always to stand open, and the windows were rarely closed—­the countess like sunshine and fresh air, but now all was shut up and silent, and not a soul was to be seen about the place.

Mr. Cardross sighed, and walked round to the other side of the castle, where was my lady’s flower-garden, or what was to be made into one.  Then he entered by French windows, from a terrace overlooking it, my lord’s library, also incomplete.  For the earl, who was by no means a bookish man, had only built that room since his marriage, to please his wife, whom perhaps he loved all the better that she was so exceedingly unlike himself.  Now both were away—­their short dream of married life ended, their plans and hopes crumbled into dust.  As yet, no external changes had been made, the other solemn changes having come so suddenly.  Gardeners still worked in the parterres, and masons and carpenters still, in a quiet and lazy manner, went on completing the beautiful room; but there was no one to order them—­no one watched their work.  Except for workmen, the place seemed so deserted that Mr. Cardross wandered through the house for some time before he found a single servant to direct him to the person of whom he was in search.

Mr. Menteith sat alone in a little room filled with guns and fishing rods, and ornamented with stag’s heads, stuffed birds, and hunting relics of all sorts, which had been called, not too appropriately, the earl’s “study.”  He was a little, dried-up man, about fifty years old, of sharp but not unkindly aspect.  When the minister entered, he looked up from the mass of papers which he seemed to have been trying to reduce into some kind of order—­apparently the late earl’s private papers, which had been untouched since his death, for there was a sad and serious shadow over what otherwise have been rather a humorous face.

“Welcome, Mr. Cardross; I am indeed glad to see you.  I took the liberty of sending for you, since you are the only person with whom I can consult—­we can consult, I should say, for Dr. Hamilton wished it likewise—­on this—­this most painful occasion.”

“I shall be very glad to be of the slightest service,” returned Mr. Cardross.  “I had the utmost respect for those that are away.”  He had the habit, this tender-hearted, pious man, who, with all his learning, kept a religious faith as simple as a child’s, as speaking of the dead as only “away.”