Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/414

406 direction, and said, "I suppose you can guess where I have been?"

"Indeed I cannot, Mr. Welsh."

"I have been at Orleigh. I thought I would like to be present at your father's funeral. Besides, I belong to the press, and my duties took me there. Also, my sister is left a widow. You may not, perhaps, have heard of the death of Captain Saltren?"

"Captain Saltren dead!"

"Yes, drowned in the old quarry pit."

"I remember having once seen him there. He was a strange man. He went there to say his prayers, and he prayed on a kind of raft of his own construction. I suppose it gave way under him, or he overbalanced himself."

"Possibly. How he fell is not known. He was very strange in his manner of late, so that the general opinion is that he was off his head. He had visions, or fancied that he had."

Arminell said no more on this matter. She was desirous of hearing about her father's funeral.

"I was present when Lord Lamerton was taken to his last rest," said Welsh; "you cannot have any conception what an amount of feeling was elicited by his death. By me it was unexpected. I could not have supposed that the people, as distinguished from the aristocracy, would have been other than coldly respectful, but his lordship must have been greatly beloved." Welsh paused and rubbed his chin. "Yes, much loved. Of course, I had only seen one side of him, and that was the side I cared to see, being a professional man, and professionally engaged to see only one side. That is in the way of business, and just as a timber merchant measures a tree, and estimates it by the amount of plank it will make, regardless of its effect in the landscape, so it is with me. I look on a man, especially a nobleman, from a commercial point of view, and ask how many feet of type I