And how about your niece?
Are you going to send her down here to help on in the good feeling ?" "I have not brought my niece into this affair," replied Mr Brandon, with dignity.
"Well, then, see that you don't," was the widow Keswick's reply.

And the interview terminated.
When Mr Brandon rode away on his good horse Albemarle, he looked at the post of the road gate from which he was lifting the latch by means of the long wooden handle arranged for the convenience of riders, and said to himself: "John Keswick was a good man, but I don't wonder he came out here and shot himself.

It is a great pity though that it wasn't his wife who did it, instead of him.

That would have been a blessing to all of us.

But," he added, contemplatively, as he closed the gate, "the people in this world who ought to blow out their brains, never do." Soon after he had gone, Mrs Null went up Pine Top Hill, and sat down on the rock to have a "think." "Now, then, Freddy," she said, "everything depends on you.