“Indeed, I was thinking of no such thing,” said Sheila indignantly, but feeling all the same that the hard, glittering, expressionless eyes were watching her.

“Do you think I believe you?” said Mrs. Lavender.  “Bah!  I hope I am able to recognize the facts of life.  If you were to die this afternoon, I should get a black silk trimmed with crape the moment I got on my feet again, and go to your funeral in the ordinary way.  I hope you will pay me the same respect.  Do you think I am afraid to speak of these things?”

“Why should you speak of them?” said Sheila despairingly.

“Because it does you good to contemplate the worst that can befall you, and if it does not happen you may rejoice.  And it will happen.  I know I shall be lying in this bed, with half a dozen of you round about trying to cry, and wondering which will have the courage to turn and go out of the room first.  Then there will be the funeral day, and Paterson will be careful about the blinds, and go about the house on her tiptoes, as if I were likely to hear!  Then there will be a pretty service up in the cemetery, and a man who never saw me will speak of his dear sister departed; and then you’ll all go home and have your dinner.  Am I afraid of it?”

“Why should you talk like that?” said Sheila piteously.  “You are not going to die.  You distress yourself and others by thinking of these horrible things.”

“My dear child, there is nothing horrible in nature.  Everything is part of the universal system which you should recognize and accept.  If you had but trained yourself now, by the study of philosophical works, to know how helpless you are to alter the facts of life, and how it is the best wisdom to be prepared for the worst, you would find nothing horrible in thinking of your own funeral.  You are not looking well.”

Sheila was startled by the suddenness of the announcement:  “Perhaps I am a little tired with the traveling we have done to-day.”

“Is Frank Lavender kind to you?” What was she to say with those two eyes scanning her face?  “It is too soon to expect him to be anything else,” she said with an effort at a smile.

“Ah!  So you are beginning to talk in that way?  I thought you were full of sentimental notions of life when you came to London.  It is not a good place for nurturing such things.”

“It is not,” said Sheila, surprised into a sigh.

“Come nearer.  Don’t be afraid I shall bite you.  I am not so ferocious as I look.”

Sheila rose and went closer to the bedside, and the old woman stretched out a lean and withered hand to her:  “If I thought that that silly fellow wasn’t behaving well to you—­”

“I will not listen to you,” said Sheila, suddenly withdrawing her hand, while a quick color leapt to her face—­“I will not listen to you if you speak of my husband in that way.”

“I will speak of him any way I like.  Don’t get into a rage.  I have known Frank Lavender a good deal longer than you have.  What I was going to say is this—­that if I thought that he was not behaving well to you, I would play him a trick.  I would leave my money, which is all he has got to live on, to you; and when I died he would find himself dependent on you for every farthing he wanted to spend.”