Cavendish entered with a flushed countenance. He spoke
indignantly of the act he still saw from the window, which he
denounced as a sacrilege against the dead. "Not four-and-twenty hours
since," cried he, "she expired! and she is hurried into the cold
bosom of the earth, like a criminal, or a creature whose ashes a
moment above ground might spread a pestilence. Oh, how can that sweet
victim, Lady Albin, share such peccant blood?"
Thaddeus, whose soul had just writhed under a similar question with
regard to himself, could little bear the repetition and interrupted
the good physician by tenderly inquiring how she had borne that so
abrupt removal of her mother's remains.
"With mute anguish," returned Dr. Cavendish, in a responding, calmer
voice of pity; "and though I had warned her father that the shock of
so suddenly tearing his daughter from such beloved relics might peril
her own life, he continued obdarate; and putting her into his
travelling chariot in a state of insensibility, along with her maid,
in a few minutes afterwards I saw him set off in a hired post-chaise,
accompanied by his detestable son, loaded with more than one curse,
muttered by the honest rustics. Only servants followed in that
mourning coach."
In the midst of this depressing conversation a courier arrived from
Stamford to Dr. Cavendish, recalling him immediately to return
thither, the invalid there having sustained an alarming relapse.
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