Suddenly the irregular sound of crunching receded.

“He’s gone somewhere else,” said Audrey.

“I’m so relieved,” said Miss Ingate.  “I hope he’s gone a long way off.”

“Are you?” murmured Audrey, with an air of surprised superiority.

But in secret Audrey felt just as relieved as Miss Ingate, despite the fact that, her mother being prostrate, she was the mistress of the situation, and could have ordered Mr. Cowl to leave, with the certainty of being obeyed.  She was astonished at her illogical sensations, and she had been frequently so astonished in the previous four days.

For example, she was free; she knew that she could impose herself on her mother; never again would she be the slave of an unreasoning tyrant; yet she was gloomy and without hope.  She had hated the unreasoning tyrant; yet she felt very sorry for him because he was dead.  And though she felt very sorry for him, she detested hearing the panegyrics upon him of the village, and particularly of those persons with whom he had quarrelled; she actually stopped Miss Ingate in the midst of an enumeration of his good qualities—­his charm, his smile, his courtesy, his integrity, et cetera; she could not bear it.  She thought that no child had ever had such a strange attitude to a deceased parent as hers to Mr. Moze.  She had anticipated the inquest with an awful dread; it proved to be a trifle, and a ridiculous trifle.  In the long weekly letter which she wrote to her adored school-friend Ethel at Manningtree she had actually likened the coroner to a pecking fowl!  Was it possible that a daughter could write in such a strain about the inquest on her father’s body?

The funeral had seemed a function by itself, with some guidance from the undertaker and still more from Mr. Cowl.  Villagers and district acquaintances had been many at the ceremony, but relatives rare.  Mr. Moze’s four younger brothers were all in the Colonies; Mrs. Moze had apparently no connections.  Madame Piriac, daughter of Mr. Moze’s first wife by that lady’s first husband, had telegraphed sympathies from Paris.  A cousin or so had come in person from Woodbridge for the day.

It was from the demeanour of these cousins, grave men twice her age or more, that Audrey had first divined her new importance in the world.  Their deference indicated that in their opinion the future mistress of Flank Hall was not Mrs. Moze, but Audrey.  Audrey admitted that they were right.  Yet she took no pleasure in issuing commands.  She spoke firmly, but she said to herself:  “There is no backbone to this firmness, and I am a fraud.”  She had always yearned for responsibility, yet now that it was in her hand she trembled, and she would have dropped it and run away from it as from a bomb, had she not been too cowardly to show her cowardice.