There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills.  It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.  Cousin Monica talked a great deal of my father.  This was easy to her, for her early recollections were full of him.

One of the terrible dislocations of our habits of mind respecting the dead is that our earthly future is robbed of them, and we thrown exclusively upon retrospect.  From the long look forward they are removed, and every plan, imagination, and hope henceforth a silent and empty perspective.  But in the past they are all they ever were.  Now let me advise all who would comfort people in a new bereavement to talk to them, very freely, all they can, in this way of the dead.  They will engage in it with interest, they will talk of their own recollections of the dead, and listen to yours, though they become sometimes pleasant, sometimes even laughable.  I found it so.  It robbed the calamity of something of its supernatural and horrible abruptness; it prevented that monotony of object which is to the mind what it is to the eye, and prepared the faculty for those mesmeric illusions that derange its sense.

Cousin Monica, I am sure, cheered me wonderfully.  I grow to love her more and more, as I think of all her trouble, care, and kindness.

I had not forgotten my promise to dear papa about the key, concerning which he had evinced so great an anxiety.  It was found in the pocket where he had desired me to remember he always kept it, except when it was placed, while he slept, under his pillow.

’And so, my dear, that wicked woman was actually found picking the lock of your poor papa’s desk.  I wonder he did not punish her—­you know that is burglary.’

’Well, Lady Knollys, you know she is gone, and so I care no more about her—­that is, I mean, I need not fear her.’

’No, my dear, but you must call me Monica—­do you mind—­I’m your cousin, and you call me Monica, unless you wish to vex me.  No, of course, you need not be afraid of her.  And she’s gone.  But I’m an old thing, you know, and not so tender-hearted as you; and I confess I should have been very glad to hear that the wicked old witch had been sent to prison and hard labour—­I should.  And what do you suppose she was looking for—­what did she want to steal?  I think I can guess—­what do you think?’

‘To read the papers; maybe to take bank-notes—­I’m not sure,’ I answered.

’Well, I think most likely she wanted to get at your poor papa’s will—­that’s my idea.

‘There is nothing surprising in the supposition, dear,’ she resumed.  ’Did not you read the curious trial at York, the other day?  There is nothing so valuable to steal as a will, when a great deal of property is to be disposed of by it.  Why, you would have given her ever so much money to get it back again.  Suppose you go down, dear—­I’ll go with you, and open the cabinet in the study.’