“Oh, Mr. Trent has had a little of Cousin Bill’s convivial manners before now,” said the young girl vivaciously, “and isn’t shocked.  But we can see the Hall from the park on our way to the station.”

Even in his anxious preoccupation he could see that the church itself was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past.  For four centuries it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him almost hysterical.  Yet again, it seemed to him that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it.  Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory of his old patron, tactfully hurried him away.  Yet it was a more bitter thought, I fear, that not only were his lips sealed to his charming companion on the subject in which they could sympathize, but his anxiety prevented him from availing himself of that interview to exchange the lighter confidences he had eagerly looked forward to.  It seemed cruel that he was debarred this chance of knitting their friendship closer by another of those accidents that had brought them together.  And he was aware that his gloomy abstraction was noticed by her.  At first she drew herself up in a certain proud reserve, and then, perhaps, his own nervousness infecting her in turn, he was at last terrified to observe that, as she stood before the tomb, her clear gray eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, please don’t do that—­there, Miss Eversleigh,” he burst out impulsively.

“I was thinking of Cousin Jack,” she said, a little startled at his abruptness.  “Sometimes it seems so strange that he is dead—­I scarcely can believe it.”

“I meant,” stammered Randolph, “that he is much happier—­you know”—­he grew almost hysterical again as he thought of the captain lying cheerfully in his bed at the hotel—­“much happier than you or I,” he added bitterly; “that is—­I mean, it grieves me so to see you grieve, you know.”

Miss Eversleigh did not know, but there was enough sincerity and real feeling in the young fellow’s voice and eyes to make her color slightly and hurry him away to a locality less fraught with emotions.  In a few moments they entered the park, and the old Hall rose before them.  It was a great Tudor house of mullioned windows, traceries, and battlements; of stately towers, moss-grown balustrades, and statues darkening with the fog that was already hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk.  A peacock spread its ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the portal; a flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above its stacked and twisted chimneys.  After all, how little had this stately incarnation of the vested rights and sacred tenures of the past in common with the laughing rover he had left in London that morning!  And thinking of the destinies that the captain held so lightly in his hand, and perhaps not a little of the absurdity of his own position to the confiding young girl beside him, for a moment he half hated him.