The sight of Thorneytoft would have taken the heart out of Mrs. Wilcox if anything could.  Mrs. Wilcox herself looked remarkably crisp and fresh and cheerful in her widow’s dress.  Tyson rather liked Mrs. Wilcox than otherwise (perhaps because she was a little afraid of him and showed it); he noticed with relief that his mother-in-law was beginning to look almost like a lady, and he attributed this pleasing effect to the fact that she was now unable to commit any of her former atrocities of color.  He respected her, too, for wearing her weeds with an air of genial worldliness.  There was something about Mrs. Wilcox that evaded the touch of sorrow; but from certain things—­food, clothes, furniture—­she seemed to catch, as it were, the sense of tears, suggestions of the human tragedy.  She was peculiarly sensitive to interiors, and a drawing-room “without any of the little refinements and luxuries, you know—­not so much as a flower-pot or a basket-table”—­weighed heavily on her happy soul.  Needless to say she had never dreamed that Nevill would let the house remain in its present state; her intellect could never have grasped so melancholy a possibility, and the fact was somewhat unsettling to her faith in Nevill Tyson.  “Isn’t it—­for a young bride, you know—­just a little—­a little triste?” And being more than a little afraid of her son-in-law, she waved her hands to give an inoffensive vagueness to her idea.  Tyson said he didn’t care to spend money on a place like Thorneytoft; he didn’t know how long he would stay in it; he never stayed anywhere long; he was a pilgrim and a stranger, a sort of cosmopolitan Cain, and he might go abroad again, or he might take a flat in town for the season.  And at the mention of a flat in town all Mrs. Wilcox’s beautiful beliefs came back to her unimpaired.  A flat in town, and a house in the country that you can afford to look down upon—­what more could you desire?

Mrs. Nevill Tyson did not take the furniture very seriously.  For quite three days after her arrival she was content to sit in that very respectable drawing-room, waiting for the callers who never came.  She could not have taken the callers very seriously either (what did Mrs. Nevill Tyson take seriously, I should like to know?), or else, surely she would have had some little regard for appearances; she would never have risked being caught at four o’clock in the afternoon sitting on Tyson’s knee, doing all sorts of absurd things to his face.  First, she stroked his hair straight down over his forehead, which had a singularly brutalizing effect, so that she was obliged to push it back again and make it all neat with one of the little tortoise-shell combs that kept her own curls in order.  Then she lifted up his mustache till the lip curled in a dreadful mechanical smile, showing a slightly crooked, slightly prominent tooth.

“Oh, what an ugly tooth!” said Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and she let the lip fall again like a curtain.  “How could I marry a man with a tooth like that!  Do you know, poor papa used to say you were just like Phorc—­Phorc—­something with a fork in it.”