The nursemaid waking in the night beheld a solitary figure darkening a lamp above her little sleeping charge, and became so used to the sight as never to wake with a start.  One night she was strangely aroused by a sound of sobbing.  The baronet stood beside the cot in his long black cloak and travelling cap.  His fingers shaded a lamp, and reddened against the fitful darkness that ever and anon went leaping up the wall.  She could hardly believe her senses to see the austere gentleman, dead silent, dropping tear upon tear before her eyes.  She lay stone-still in a trance of terror and mournfulness, mechanically counting the tears as they fell, one by one.  The hidden face, the fall and flash of those heavy drops in the light of the lamp he held, the upright, awful figure, agitated at regular intervals like a piece of clockwork by the low murderous catch of his breath:  it was so piteous to her poor human nature that her heart began wildly palpitating.  Involuntarily the poor girl cried out to him, “Oh, sir!” and fell a-weeping.  Sir Austin turned the lamp on her pillow, and harshly bade her go to sleep, striding from the room forthwith.  He dismissed her with a purse the next day.

Once, when he was seven years old, the little fellow woke up at night to see a lady bending over him.  He talked of this the neat day, but it was treated as a dream; until in the course of the day his uncle Algernon was driven home from Lobourne cricket-ground with a broken leg.  Then it was recollected that there was a family ghost; and, though no member of the family believed in the ghost, none would have given up a circumstance that testified to its existence; for to possess a ghost is a distinction above titles.

Algernon Feverel lost his leg, and ceased to be a gentleman in the Guards.  Of the other uncles of young Richard, Cuthbert, the sailor, perished in a spirited boat expedition against a slaving negro chief up the Niger.  Some of the gallant lieutenant’s trophies of war decorated the little boy’s play-shed at Raynham, and he bequeathed his sword to Richard, whose hero he was.  The diplomatist and beau, Vivian, ended his flutterings from flower to flower by making an improper marriage, as is the fate of many a beau, and was struck out of the list of visitors.  Algernon generally occupied the baronet’s disused town-house, a wretched being, dividing his time between horse and card exercise:  possessed, it was said, of the absurd notion that a man who has lost his balance by losing his leg may regain it by sticking to the bottle.  At least, whenever he and his brother Hippias got together, they never failed to try whether one leg, or two, stood the bottle best.  Much of a puritan as Sir Austin was in his habits, he was too good a host, and too thorough a gentleman, to impose them upon his guests.  The brothers, and other relatives, might do as they would while they did not disgrace the name, and then it was final:  they must depart to behold his countenance no more.