Father Eustace Author:Frances Milton Trollope Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The priest found Lady Sarah de Morley and her daughter sitting side by side, on a sofa in the young lady's dressing-room. Her mother had been end... more »eavouring to prevail on her to go to bed—advice, which not only the lateness of the hour, but the extreme paleness of the poor girl's countenance rendered more than reasonable; but hitherto it had been resisted, upon the plea that sleep at such a moment was out of the question. "It is all over!" exclaimed Lady Sarah, the instant Father Ambrose appeared. For a moment she, too, covered her face with her hands, and during that moment the long-chilled and almost forgotten thoughts of her early love rushed back upon her mind with a freshness of emotion which nothingless startling than death itself, and the consciousness of eternal separation which accompanied it, could have produced. But there was a strictness, I might almost say a sternness of truth, in the character of Lady Sarah, which rendered the idea of appearing to feel a sorrow, which in fact was foreign to her heart, detestable; and immediately recovering her self-possession, she said, " I presume that I am not mistaken as to the nature of your errand, Father Ambrose? I presume that you come to announce the death of my husband ?" " Even so, madam," replied the priest, at once reproaching both her heresy and want of feeling, by dropping his eyelids in mournful guise, and signing himself with the figure of the cross. " My daughter is a minor," resumed Lady Sarah, " and till the will of Mr. de Morley shall have been opened, I know not on whom devolves the authority that must regulate her affairs till she becomes of age. In the meantime, however, I am sure that I cannot do wrong in trusting to you, sir, for orderingeverything necessary for the ceremony of in...« less