Still Waters by Florence Marryat

I often wonder if when, as the Bible tells us, ‘the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed,' they will be revealed to our fellow-creatures as well as to the Almighty Judge of men.

I am not usually given to philosophise, but the above remark was drawn from me by the receipt of a letter this morning from my niece, Justina Trevor, announcing the death of her ‘dear friend,' Mrs Benson, which recalled the remembrance of an incident that took place a few months since, whilst I was staying at Durham Hall, in Derbyshire, the estate of her late husband, Sir Harry Trevor. I am an old bachelor, though not so old as I look; yet when I confess that I write ‘General' before my name, and have served most of my time in hot climates, it will readily be believed that no one would take me for a chicken. It was after an absence of fourteen years that, last November, I arrived in England, and put up at an hotel near Covent Garden, which had been a favourite resort of mine during my last stay in London. But I soon found that I had made a great mistake, for town was dark, damp, dirty, deserted, detestable; in fact, no adjective, however long and however strong, could convey an adequate idea of the impression made upon me by a review of the great metropolis; and it was with a feeling of intense relief that I perused a letter from my niece Justina, to whom I had duly announced my advent, in which she insisted that her ‘dear uncle' must spend his first Christmas in England nowhere but at Durham Hall, with Sir Harry and herself. Now Justina, if not my only, is certainly my nearest relative, and _I_ knew that _she_ knew that I was an old fellow on the shady side of sixty-five, with a couple of pounds or so laid by in the Oriental Bank, and with no one to leave them to but herself or her children; but I was not going to let that fact interfere with my prospects of present comfort; and so, ordering my servant to repack my travelling cases, the next day but one saw us _en route_ for Derbyshire.