Castleford's return
from Ireland, where he was still staying with his wife's relations.
Clarence was received at the office with a kind of shamefaced
cordiality, as if every one would fain forget the way in which he
had been treated; and he was struck by finding that all the talk was
of the advances of the cholera, chiefly at Rotherhithe. And a great
shock awaited him. He went, as soon as business hours were over, to
thank good old Miss Newton for the comfort and aid she had
unwittingly given him, and to tell her from what she had saved him.
Alas! it was the last benefit she was ever to confer on her old
pupil. At the door he was told by a weeping, terrified maid that
she was very ill with cholera, and that no hope was given. He tried
to send up a message, but she was in a state of collapse and
insensible; and when he inquired the next morning, the gentle spirit
had passed away.
He attended her funeral that same evening. Griff said it was a
proof how your timid people will do the most foolhardy things; but
Clarence always held that the good woman had really done more for
him than any one in actually establishing a contact, so to say,
between his spirit and external truth, and he thought no mark of
respect beyond her deserts. She was a heavy loss to him, for no one
else in town gave him the sense of home kindness; and there was much
more to depress him, for several of his Sunday class were dead, and
the school had been broken up for the time, while the heats and the
fruits of August contributed to raise the mortality.
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