An Eye for an Eye | Page 2

of an asylum for the insane. Of this abode of wretchedness no
word more shall be said; but the story shall be told of the lady who
dwelt there,--the story of her life till madness placed her within those
walls. That story was known to none at the establishment but to him
who was its head. Others there, who were cognisant of the condition of
the various patients, only knew that from quarter to quarter the charges
for this poor lady's custody were defrayed by the Earl of Scroope.

CHAPTER I.
SCROOPE MANOR.
Some years ago, it matters not how many, the old Earl of Scroope lived
at Scroope Manor in Dorsetshire. The house was an Elizabethan
structure of some pretensions, but of no fame. It was not known to
sight-seers, as are so many of the residences of our nobility and country
gentlemen. No days in the week were appointed for visiting its glories,
nor was the housekeeper supposed to have a good thing in perquisites
from showing it. It was a large brick building facing on to the village
street,--facing the village, if the hall-door of a house be the main
characteristic of its face; but with a front on to its own grounds from
which opened the windows of the chief apartments. The village of
Scroope consisted of a straggling street a mile in length, with the
church and parsonage at one end, and the Manor-house almost at the
other. But the church stood within the park; and on that side of the
street, for more than half its length, the high, gloomy wall of the Earl's
domain stretched along in face of the publicans, bakers, grocers, two
butchers, and retired private residents whose almost contiguous houses
made Scroope itself seem to be more than a village to strangers. Close
to the Manor and again near to the church, some favoured few had been
allowed to build houses and to cultivate small gardens taken, as it were,
in notches out of the Manor grounds; but these tenements must have
been built at a time in which landowners were very much less jealous
than they are now of such encroachments from their humbler
neighbours.
The park itself was large, and the appendages to it such as were fit for
an Earl's establishment;--but there was little about it that was attractive.
The land lay flat, and the timber, which was very plentiful, had not
been made to group itself in picturesque forms. There was the Manor
wood, containing some five hundred acres, lying beyond the church

and far back from the road, intersected with so-called drives, which
were unfit for any wheels but those of timber waggons;--and round the
whole park there was a broad belt of trees. Here and there about the
large enclosed spaces there stood solitary oaks, in which the old Earl
took pride; but at Scroope Manor there was none of that finished
landscape beauty of which the owners of "places" in England are so
justly proud.
The house was large, and the rooms were grand and spacious. There
was an enormous hall into one corner of which the front door opened.
There was a vast library filled with old books which no one ever
touched,--huge volumes of antiquated and now all but useless theology,
and folio editions of the least known classics,--such as men now never
read. Not a book had been added to it since the commencement of the
century, and it may almost be said that no book had been drawn from
its shelves for real use during the same period. There was a suite of
rooms,--a salon with two withdrawing rooms which now were never
opened. The big dining-room was used occasionally, as, in accordance
with the traditions of the family, dinner was served there whenever
there were guests at the Manor. Guests, indeed, at Scroope Manor were
not very frequent;--but Lady Scroope did occasionally have a friend or
two to stay with her; and at long intervals the country clergymen and
neighbouring squires were asked, with their wives, to dinner. When the
Earl and his Countess were alone they used a small breakfast parlour,
and between this and the big dining-room there was the little chamber
in which the Countess usually lived. The Earl's own room was at the
back, or if the reader pleases, front of the house, near the door leading
into the street, and was, of all rooms in the house, the gloomiest.
The atmosphere of the whole place was gloomy. There were none of
those charms of modern creation which now make the mansions of the
wealthy among us bright and joyous. There was not a billiard table in
the house. There was no conservatory nearer than the large
old-fashioned greenhouse, which stood away by the kitchen garden