‘Just fancy, Mr. Twemlow,’ Millicent burst out.  ’We walked all the way to Oldcastle, and we never thought, and no one reminded us.  It’s father’s fault, really.’

‘What is father’s fault, really?’

’It’s Thursday afternoon and the shops were all shut.  We shall have to go to-morrow morning.’

‘Ah!’ he said.  ’The stores don’t shut on Thursday afternoon in New York.’

‘Mother will be able to come with us to-morrow morning,’ said Ethel, and approaching Leonora she asked:  ‘Are you all right, mother?’

This simple, familiar conversation, and the free movements of the girls, and the graver suavity of Arthur and herself, seemed to Leonora to constitute a picture, a scene, of mysterious and profound charm.

Arthur rose to depart.  The girls wished him to stay, but Leonora did not support them.  In a house where an aged relative lay ill, and that relative so pathetically bereaved, it was not meet that a visitor should remain too long.  Immediately he had gone she began to anticipate their next meeting.  The eagerness of that anticipation surprised her.  And, moreover, the environment of her life closed quickly round her; she could not ignore it.  She demanded of herself what was Arthur’s excuse for calling, and how it was that she should be so happy in the midst of woe and death.  Her joyous confidence was shaken.  Feeling that on such a day she ought to have been something other than a delicate chatelaine idly dispensing tea in a drawing-room, she went upstairs, determined to find some useful activity.

The light was failing in the sick-room, and the fire shone brighter.  Bessie had disappeared, and Rose sat in her place.  Uncle Meshach still slept.

‘Have you had a good rest, my dear?’ she whispered, kissing Rose fondly.  ’You had better go downstairs.  I’ve had some tea, and I’ll take charge here now.’

‘Very well,’ the girl assented, yawning.  ‘Who’s that just gone?’

‘Mr. Twemlow.’

‘Oh, mother!’ Rose exclaimed in angry disappointment.  ’Why didn’t some one tell me he was here?’

* * * * *

‘The cortege will move at 2.15,’ said the mourning invitation cards, and on Saturday at two o’clock Uncle Meshach, dressed in deep black, sat on a cane-chair against the wall in the bedroom of his late sister.  He had not been able to conceive Hannah’s funeral without himself as chief mourner, and therefore he had accomplished his own recovery in the amazing period of fifty hours; and in addition to accomplishing his recovery he had given an uninterrupted series of the most minute commands concerning the arrangements for the obsequies.  Protests had been utterly useless.  ‘It will kill him,’ said Leonora to the doctor as Meshach, risen straight out of bed, was getting into a cab at Hillport that morning to drive to Church Street.  ‘It may,’ old Hawley answered.  ‘But what can one do?’ Smiling, first at Meshach, and then at Leonora, the doctor had joined his aged patient in the cab and they had gone off together.