“It is enough.  I thank my God for this great mercy; and now that I have been permitted to clear my character, leave me, Algernon, and take my blessing with you.  Only remember in your prayers that such a miserable wretch as Elinor Wildegrave still lives.”

The violent ringing of the miser’s bell hurried her away.  Algernon remained for some minutes rooted to the spot, his heart still heaving with the sense of intolerable wrong.  Elinor did not again appear; and descending to what was once the Servants’ Hall, he bade Ruth summon his attendants, and slipping a guinea into that delighted damsel’s hand, he bade a long adieu to the home of his ancestors.

CHAPTER VI.

    Oh, what a change—­a goodly change! 
    I, too, am changed.  I feel my heart expand;
    My spirit, long bowed down with misery,
    Grow light and buoyant ’mid these blessed scenes.—­S.M.

As Elinor predicted, the miser slowly recovered, and for a few months his severe illness had a salutary effect upon his mind and temper.  He was even inclined to treat his wife with more respect; and when informed by Dr. Moore of the birth of his son, he received the intelligence with less impatience than she had anticipated.  But this gleam of sunshine did not last long.  With returning strength his old monomania returned; and he began loudly to complain of the expense which his long illness had incurred, and to rave at the extortion of doctors and nurses; declaring the necessity of making every possible retrenchment, in order to replace the money so lost.  Elinor did not live long enough to endure these fresh privations.  She sunk into a lingering decline, and before her little boy could lisp her name, the friendly turf had closed over his heart-broken mother.

Small was the grief expressed by the miser for the death of his gentle partner.  To avoid all unnecessary expense, she was buried in the churchyard, instead of occupying a place in the family vault; and no stone was erected during the life of the squire, to her memory.

It was a matter of surprise to the whole neighborhood that the young child survived his mother.  His father left Nature to supply her place, and, but for the doting affection of Ruth, who came every night and morning to wash and feed him, out of pure affection to her dear mistress, the little Anthony would soon have occupied a place by his ill-fated mother.

The Squire never cast a thought upon his half-clad half-famished babe without bitterly cursing him as an additional and useless expense.  Anthony was a quiet and sweet-tempered little fellow; the school in which he was educated taught him to endure with patience trials that would have broken the spirit of a less neglected child.

Except the kindness which he received from Ruth, who was now married to a laborer, and the mother of children of her own, he was a stranger to sympathy and affection; and he did not expect to receive from strangers the tenderness which he never experienced at home.