completely unmanned me; and I stood speechless and powerless before my
cousin as he continued to detail to me the rapid progress of Sir Guy's
malady, and attack of gout in the head, which carried him off in three
days. Letters had been sent to me in different places, but none reached;
and at the very moment the clerk of my uncle's lawyer was in pursuit of
me through the highlands, where some mistaken information had induced him
to follow me.

"You are, therefore," continued Guy, "unaware that our uncle has dealt so
fairly by you, and indeed by both of us; I have got the Somersetshire
estates, which go with the baronetcy; but the Cumberland property is all
yours; and I heartily wish you joy of having nearly eight thousand per
annum, and one of the sweetest villas that ever man fancied on
Derwentwater. But come along here," continued he, and he led me through
the crowded corridor and up the wide stair. "I have much to tell you,
and we can be perfectly alone here; no one will trouble themselves with
us." Unconscious of all around me, I followed Guy along the gilded and
glittering lobby, which led to the Salon, and it was only as the servant
in rich livery came forward to take my hat and cane that I remembered
where I was. Then the full sense of all I had been listening to rushed
upon me, and the unfitness, and indeed the indecency of the place for
such communications as we were engaged in, came most forcibly before me.
Sir Guy, it is true, had always preferred my cousin to me; he it was who
was always destined to succeed both to his title and his estates, and his
wildness and extravagance had ever met with a milder rebuke and weaker
chastisement than my follies and my misfortunes. Yet still he was my
last remaining relative; the only one I possessed in all the world to
whom in any difficulty or trial I had to look up; and I felt, in the very
midst of my newly acquired wealth and riches, poorer and more alone than
ever I had done in my lifetime. I followed Guy to a small and dimly