“The time is getting on,” he said, looking toward the shrubbery, as he joined Mr. Clare.

“My appointment with Miss Garth is for eleven o’clock:  it only wants ten minutes of the hour.”

“Are you to see her alone?” asked Mr. Clare.

“I left Miss Garth to decide—­after warning her, first of all, that the circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very serious nature.”

“And has she decided?”

“She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and repeated the warning I had given her to both the daughters.  The elder of the two shrinks—­and who can wonder at it?—­from any discussion connected with the future which requires her presence so soon as the day after the funeral.  The younger one appears to have expressed no opinion on the subject.  As I understand it, she suffers herself to be passively guided by her sister’s example.  My interview, therefore, will take place with Miss Garth alone—­and it is a very great relief to me to know it.”

He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than seemed habitual to him.  Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest attentively.

“You are almost as old as I am, sir,” he said.  “Has all your long experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet?”

“I never knew how little it had hardened me,” replied Mr. Pendril, quietly, “until I returned from London yesterday to attend the funeral.  I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on following their parents to the grave.  I think their presence made the closing scene of this dreadful calamity doubly painful, and doubly touching.  You saw how the great concourse of people were moved by it—­and they were in ignorance of the truth; they knew nothing of the cruel necessity which takes me to the house this morning.  The sense of that necessity—­and the sight of those poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty toward them most painfully—­shook me, as a man of my years and my way of life is not often shaken by any distress in the present or any suspense in the future.  I have not recovered it this morning:  I hardly feel sure of myself yet.”

“A man’s composure—­when he is a man like you—­comes with the necessity for it,” said Mr. Clare.  “You must have had duties to perform as trying in their way as the duty that lies before you this morning.”

Mr. Pendril shook his head.  “Many duties as serious; many stories more romantic.  No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this.”

With those words they parted.  Mr. Pendril left the garden for the shrubbery path which led to Combe-Raven.  Mr. Clare returned to the cottage.

On reaching the passage, he looked through the open door of his little parlor and saw Frank sitting there in idle wretchedness, with his head resting wearily on his hand.

“I have had an answer from your employers in London,” said Mr. Clare.  “In consideration of what has happened, they will allow the offer they made you to stand over for another month.”