It was so difficult, at first, to break herself
of the habit of constant mental reference to him; and for many a long
year she kept thinking that surely some kind fortune would bring them
together again, and all this heart-sickness and melancholy estrangement
from each other would then seem to both only as an ugly dream that had
passed away in the morning light.
The dean was an old man, but there was a canon who was older still, and
whose death had been expected by many, and speculated upon by some, any
time for ten years at least. Canon Holdsworth was too old to show active
kindness to any one; the good dean's life was full of thoughtful and
benevolent deeds. But he was taken, and the other left. Ellinor looked
out at the vacant deanery with tearful eyes, the last thing at night, the
first in the morning. But it is pretty nearly the same with church
dignitaries as with kings; the dean is dead, long live the dean! A
clergyman from a distant county was appointed, and all the Close was
astir to learn and hear every particular connected with him. Luckily he
came in at the tag-end of one of the noble families in the peerage; so,
at any rate, all his future associates could learn with tolerable
certainty that he was forty-two years of age, married, and with eight
daughters and one son. The deanery, formerly so quiet and sedate a
dwelling of the one old man, was now to be filled with noise and
merriment.
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