At Lady’s Oak—­an ancient forest boundary—­where the main road forks, Damaris swung the dog-cart to the left, across the single-arch stone bridge spanning the Arne; and on, up the long winding ascent from the valley-bottom to the moorlands patched with dark fir plantations, which range inland from behind Stourmouth.  This constituted the goal of her journey; for, the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of open country are disclosed north and west, far as the eye carries, to the fine bare outline of the Wiltshire Downs.  She asked for wide prospects, for air and ample space; but as floored by stable earth rather than by the eternal unrest and “fruitless, sonorous furrows” of the sea.

Ever since the day of the funeral, now nearly a fortnight ago, Damaris had kept within the sheltering privacy of the house and grounds.  That day, one of soft drizzling rain and clinging ground fog, had also been to her one of hardly endurable distraction.  Beneath assumption of respectful silence, it jarred, boomed, took notes, debated, questioned.  Beneath assumption of solemnity, it peeped and stared.  Her flayed nerves and desolated heart plagued her with suspicions of insincerity.

In as far as Colonel Carteret controlled proceedings all had been marked by reverent simplicity.  But where the carcass is, the eagles, proverbially, gather.  And unfeathered fowl, in their own estimation eminently representative of that regal species, flocked to Deadham church and to The Hard.

If—­to vary our metaphor—­some, in the past, inclined to stone the living prophet, these now outvied one another in their alacrity to bedeck his tomb.  Dr. Cripps, for example, hurried to offer himself as pall-bearer—­a request the more readily disposed of that there was no pall.  While Archdeacon Verity, to cite a second example and from a higher social level, supported by his elder son Pontifex—­domestic chaplain to the Bishop of Harchester—­insisted on sharing with Canon Horniblow the melancholy honour of reading the burial service.

For the rest, the head, and lesser members of the family, from the big house at Canton Magna, were solidly, not to say rather aggressively in evidence.  With them Mrs. Cowden and her husband-satellite, the Honourable Augustus joined forces on arriving from Paulton Lacy.—­Lord Bulparc drove over from Napworth Castle.  The country, indeed, showed up with commendable indifference to depressing atmospheric conditions.  Marychurch sent a contingent.  Stourmouth followed suit in the shape of General Frayling—­attended by Marshall Wace in full clerical raiment—­bearing a wreath of palm, violets, and myrtle wholly disproportionate in bulk and circumference to his own shrivelled and rather tottery form.—­Of this unlooked for advent more hereafter.—­Other distinguished soldiers came from Aldershot and down from town.  A permanent Under Secretary, correct but visibly bored, represented the India Office.