The Moonstone - Page 206/404

The foregoing correspondence will sufficiently explain why no choice

is left to me but to pass over Lady Verinder's death with the simple

announcement of the fact which ends my fifth chapter.

Keeping myself for the future strictly within the limits of my own

personal experience, I have next to relate that a month elapsed from the

time of my aunt's decease before Rachel Verinder and I met again. That

meeting was the occasion of my spending a few days under the same roof

with her. In the course of my visit, something happened, relative to

her marriage-engagement with Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite, which is important

enough to require special notice in these pages. When this last of

many painful family circumstances has been disclosed, my task will be

completed; for I shall then have told all that I know, as an actual (and

most unwilling) witness of events.

My aunt's remains were removed from London, and were buried in the

little cemetery attached to the church in her own park. I was invited to

the funeral with the rest of the family. But it was impossible (with my

religious views) to rouse myself in a few days only from the shock which

this death had caused me. I was informed, moreover, that the rector of

Frizinghall was to read the service. Having myself in past times seen

this clerical castaway making one of the players at Lady Verinder's

whist-table, I doubt, even if I had been fit to travel, whether I should

have felt justified in attending the ceremony.

Lady Verinder's death left her daughter under the care of her

brother-in-law, Mr. Ablewhite the elder. He was appointed guardian

by the will, until his niece married, or came of age. Under these

circumstances, Mr. Godfrey informed his father, I suppose, of the new

relation in which he stood towards Rachel. At any rate, in ten days from

my aunt's death, the secret of the marriage-engagement was no secret

at all within the circle of the family, and the grand question for Mr.

Ablewhite senior--another confirmed castaway!--was how to make himself

and his authority most agreeable to the wealthy young lady who was going

to marry his son.

Rachel gave him some trouble at the outset, about the choice of a place

in which she could be prevailed upon to reside. The house in Montagu

Square was associated with the calamity of her mother's death. The

house in Yorkshire was associated with the scandalous affair of the

lost Moonstone. Her guardian's own residence at Frizinghall was open

to neither of these objections. But Rachel's presence in it, after her

recent bereavement, operated as a check on the gaieties of her cousins,

the Miss Ablewhites--and she herself requested that her visit might

be deferred to a more favourable opportunity. It ended in a proposal,

emanating from old Mr. Ablewhite, to try a furnished house at Brighton.

His wife, an invalid daughter, and Rachel were to inhabit it together,

and were to expect him to join them later in the season. They would see

no society but a few old friends, and they would have his son Godfrey,

travelling backwards and forwards by the London train, always at their

disposal.