It had its grand ponderosity in
stone and marble sacred to the memory of noble dust, and a throng of
poor iron crosses, leaning this way and that amidst the unkempt, tall
grasses.
Lady Latimer walked in; Harry Musgrave and Bessie waited outside. My
lady had many questions to ask of the gardener about the tenants of the
vaults beneath the huge monuments, and many inscriptions upon the wall
to read--pathetic, quaint, or fulsome. At length she turned to rejoin
her companions. They were gazing through a locked grate into a tiny
garden where were two graves only--a verdant little spot over which the
roses hung in clouds of beauty and fragrance. An inscription on a slab
sunk in the wall stated that this piece of ground was given for a
burial-place to his country-people by an Englishman who had there buried
his only son. The other denizen of the narrow plat was Dorothea Fairfax,
at whose head and feet were white marble stones, the sculpture on them
as distinct as yesterday. Bessie turned away with tears in her eyes.
"What is it?" said my lady sharply, and peered through the grate. Harry
Musgrave had walked on. When Lady Latimer looked round her face was
stern and cold, and the pleasant light had gone out of it. Without
meeting Elizabeth's glance she spoke: "The dead are always in the right;
the living always in the wrong. I had forgotten it was at Bellagio that
Dorothy died. Has Oliver seen it, I wonder? I must tell him.
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