They all rushed towards the little rustic building to verify the certainty of the gardener"s remarks. There she lay, cold, stiff, and lifeless as Nero, and must have been dead for hours. They advised the authorities, who were soon on the spot.
What stinging looks of shame the Marquis cast upon her corpse on being told that it was that of the once beautiful Lady Dunfern--mother of the present heir to Dunfern estate!
Lying close at hand was an old and soiled card, with the words almost beyond distinction, "Irene Iddesleigh." In an instant her whole history flashed before the unforgiving mind of the Marquis, and being a sharer in her devices, through his nephew Oscar Otwell, ordered her body to be conveyed to the morgue, at the same time intimating to Sir Hugh Dunfern her demise.
It transpired at the inquest, held next day, that she was admitted the previous night to the grounds of Dilworth Castle by the porter at the lodge, giving her name as "Irene Iddesleigh."
She must have taken refuge in the little construction planned under her personal supervision whilst inhabiting Dilworth Castle during her girlhood, and, haunted with the never-dying desire to visit once more its lovely grounds, wandered there to die of starvation.
No notice whatever was taken of her death by her son, who obeyed to the last letter his father"s instructions, and carried them out with tearless pride.
The little narrow bed at the lowest corner on the west side of Seaforde graveyard was the spot chosen for her remains. Thus were laid to rest the orphan of Colonel Iddesleigh, the adopted daughter and imagined heiress of Lord and Lady Dilworth, what might have been the proud wife of Sir John Dunfern, the unlawful wife of Oscar Otwell, the suicidal outcast, and the despised and rejected mother.
She who might have swayed society"s circle with the sceptre of n.o.bleness--she who might still have shared in the greatness of her position and defied the crooked stream of poverty in which she so long sailed--had she only been, first of all, true to self, then the honourable name of Sir John Dunfern would have maintained its standard of pure and n.o.ble distinction, without being spotted here and there with heathenish remarks inflicted by a sarcastic public on the administerer of proper punishment; then the dignified knight of proud and upright ancestry would have been spared the pains of incessant insult, the mockery of equals, the haunted diseases of mental trials, the erring eye of harshness, and the throbbing twitch of constant criticism.
It was only the lapse of a few minutes after the widowed waif left Dunfern Mansion until the arrival of her son from London, who, after bidding his mother quit the grounds owned by him, blotted her name for ever from his book of memory; and being strongly prejudiced by a father of faultless bearing, resolved that the sharers of beauty, youth, and false love should never have the slightest catch on his affections.
The End