With a passionate fervor he believed all that he tried to teach, and held that an almighty, all loving and all merciful God controlled every destiny, ordered existence for the greatest and least, and allowed nothing to happen upon earth that was not the best that could happen for the immortal beings He had created in His own image.  Upon this assurance fell the greatest, almost the only, blow that life could deal Septimus May.  He was stricken suddenly, fearfully with his unutterable loss; but his agony turned into prayer while he knelt beside his son.  He prayed with a fiery intensity and a resonant vibration of voice that scorched rather than comforted the woman who knelt beside him.  The fervor of the man’s emotion and the depth of his conviction, running like a torrent through the narrow channels of his understanding, were destined presently to complicate a situation sufficiently painful without intervention; for a time swiftly came when Septimus May forced his beliefs upon Chadlands and opposed them to the opinions of other people as deeply concerned as himself to explain the death of his son.

Mr. May, learning that most of the house party could not depart until the following morning, absented himself from dinner; indeed, he spent his time almost entirely with his boy, and when night came kept vigil beside him.  Something of the strange possession of his mind already appeared, in curious hints that puzzled Sir Walter; but it was not until after the post-mortem examination and inquest that his extraordinary views were elaborated.

Millicent Fayre-Michell and her uncle were the first to depart on the following day.  The girl harbored a grievance.

“Surely Mary might have seen me a moment to say ‘Good-bye,’” she said.  “It’s a very dreadful thing, but we’ve been so sympathetic and understanding about it that I think they ought to feel rather grateful.  They might realize how trying it is for us, too.  And to let me go without even seeing her—­she saw Mrs. Travers over and over again.”

“Do not mind.  Grief makes people selfish,” declared Felix.  “Probably we should not have acted so.  I think we should have hidden our sufferings and faced our duty; but perhaps we are exceptional.  I dare say Mrs. May will write and express regret and gratitude later.  We must allow for her youth and sorrow.”

Mr. Fayre-Michell rather prided himself on the charity of this conclusion.

When Mr. and Mrs. Travers departed, Sir Walter bade them farewell.  The lady wept, and her tears fell on his hand as he held it.  She was hysterical.

“For Heaven’s sake don’t let Mary be haunted by that dreadful priest,” she said.  “There is something terrible about him.  He has no bowels of compassion.  I tried to console him for the loss of his son, and he turned upon me as if I were weak-minded.”

“I had to tell him he was being rude and forgetting that he spoke to a lady,” said Ernest Travers.  “One makes every allowance for a father’s sufferings; but they should not take the form of abrupt and harsh speech to a sympathetic fellow-creature—­nay, to anyone, let alone a woman.  His sacred calling ought to—­”