But when I was just three-and-twenty, an attack of diphtheria broke
out; my mother and I both caught it; and, alas! I alone recovered.
The illness was very long with me, partly from my desolateness and
grief, for, tender as my kind old servants were, and good as were my
friends and neighbours, they could only make me feel what they were
_not_.
Our old lawyer, Mr. Prosser, had written to my nephew, for we knew
that both the poor brothers were dead; but he assured me that I might
safely stay on at the old place, for it would be eight months before
his letter could be answered, and the heir could not come for a long
time after.
I was very glad to linger on, for I clung to the home, and looked at
every bush and flower, blossoming for the last time, almost as if I
were dying, and leaving them to a sort of fiend. My mother's old
friends, Lady Diana Tracy and Lord Erymanth, her brother, used to
bemoan with me the coming of this lad, born of a plebeian mother,
bred up in a penal colony, and, no doubt, uneducated except in its
coarsest vices. Lord Erymanth told at endless length all the advice
he had given my father in vain, and bewailed the sense of justice
that had bequeathed the property to such a male heir as could not
fail to be a scourge to the country. Everyone had some story to tell
of Ambrose's fiery speeches and insubordinate actions, viewing
Eustace as not so bad because his mere satellite--and what must not
their sons be?
The only person who had any feeling of pity or affection for them was
old Miss Woolmer.
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