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Gosford's face became expressionless like wood, his body rigid; then he stood up and faced the three men across the table. "Quite so!" he said in his vacuous English voice. "Marshall wrote a 3 by inadvertence and changed it. He borrowed my penknife to erase the figure." My father and Lewis gaped like men who see a penned-in beast slip out through an unimagined passage. There was silence.
Lord Gosford's appointment caused much surprise. He was a stranger in politics and in civil government. There is no doubt that his appointment was a last resource. But his Irish geniality and his facility in being all things to all men were no small recommendations for a governor who was to attempt to set things right in Canada.
In spite, however, of the uneasiness of the English official element, and the obduracy of the extreme Patriotes, it is barely possible that Gosford, with his bonhomie and his Burgundy, might have effected a modus vivendi, had there not occurred, about six months after Gosford's arrival in Canada, one of those unfortunate and unforeseen events which upset the best-laid schemes of mice and men.
It was immediately seen that a discrepancy existed between the tenor of Sir Francis Bond Head's instructions and the tenor of Lord Gosford's speech at the opening of the legislature of Lower Canada in 1835.
Papineau was confirmed in his belief that justice could not be hoped for; those who had been won over by Gosford's blandishments experienced a revulsion of feeling; and Gosford saw the fruit of his efforts vanishing into thin air. A climax came over the question of supply.
"The truth is," added Chilton, "that, chancing the other day to be looking over a 'peerage, I noticed for the first time the date of your marriage with the late Earl of Seyton, and I have now to inform you that it took place precisely eight days previous to Mr. Gosford's death; that it was consequently no marriage at all; and that your son is no more Earl of Seyton than I am."
Finally, he made a plea for the reconciliation of the French and English races in the country, whom he described as 'the offspring of the two foremost nations of mankind. Not even the most extreme of the Patriotes could fail to see that Lord Gosford was holding out to them an olive branch. Great dissatisfaction, of course, arose among the English in the colony at Lord Gosford's policy.
It cannot be supposed that the long-before practically widowed wife grieved much at the final breaking of the chain which bound her to so ungenial a mate; but as Lady Seyton was entirely silent upon the subject, our supposition can only rest upon the fact, that Arthur Kingston who had some time previously, in consequence of the death of the Earl of Seyton and his only son, an always-weakly child, preceded a few months by that of his own father, the baronet, succeeded to the earldom and estates hastened home, on seeing the announcement of Gosford's death in the Dublin paper, from the continent, where he had continued to reside since his compelled-departure six years before; and soon afterwards found his way into Devonshire, and so successfully pressed the renewed offer of his hand, that the wedding took place slightly within six months after the decease of Mr.
"Colors!" they said, for the changed figure in the will was black. "Why, yes," replied the old man, "it is very pretty." He reached across the table and drew over Mr. Gosford's memorandum beside the will. "You are progressive, sir," he went on; "you write in iron-nutgall ink, just made, commercially, in this year of fifty-six by Mr. Stephens.
It was this: Chilton, who returned to this country from the Cape, where he had resided for three years previously, about two months ago, having some business to settle in Dublin, went over there, and one day visited Swords, read the inscription on Charles Gosford's grave-stone, and immediately sought out the grave-digger, and asked him if he had any record of that gentleman's burial.
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