But Mary herself began to be more agitated by the remembrance of what she had gone through, than she had been by the reality—­ questioning those acts of hers which had come imperatively and excluded all question in the critical moment.

Presently the dry wood sent out a flame which illuminated every crevice, and Mary saw that the old man was lying quietly with his head turned a little on one side.  She went towards him with inaudible steps, and thought that his face looked strangely motionless; but the next moment the movement of the flame communicating itself to all objects made her uncertain.  The violent beating of her heart rendered her perceptions so doubtful that even when she touched him and listened for his breathing, she could not trust her conclusions.  She went to the window and gently propped aside the curtain and blind, so that the still light of the sky fell on the bed.

The next moment she ran to the bell and rang it energetically.  In a very little while there was no longer any doubt that Peter Featherstone was dead, with his right hand clasping the keys, and his left hand lying on the heap of notes and gold.

BOOK IV.

THREE LOVE PROBLEMS.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

1st Gent.  Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws. 
Carry no weight, no force.
2d Gent.  But levity
Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight. 
For power finds its place in lack of power;
Advance is cession, and the driven ship
May run aground because the helmsman’s thought
Lacked force to balance opposites.”

It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried.  In the prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm and sunny, and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds of Lowick churchyard.  Swiftly moving clouds only now and then allowed a gleam to light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand within its golden shower.  In the churchyard the objects were remarkably various, for there was a little country crowd waiting to see the funeral.  The news had spread that it was to be a “big burying;” the old gentleman had left written directions about everything and meant to have a funeral “beyond his betters.”  This was true; for old Featherstone had not been a Harpagon whose passions had all been devoured by the ever-lean and ever-hungry passion of saving, and who would drive a bargain with his undertaker beforehand.  He loved money, but he also loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and perhaps he loved it best of all as a means of making others feel his power more or less uncomfortably.  If any one will here contend that there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not presume to deny this;