Lady Dighton’s straightforward question meant to be answered.

“Yes,” Maurice said rather crossly.  “I am anxious and worried.”

“You can do no good by writing?”

“I seem to do harm.  Don’t talk to me about it, Louisa.  Nothing but my being there could have done any good, and now it is most likely too late.”

She saw plainly enough the fight that was going on—­impatience, eagerness, selfishness of a kind, on one side—­duty and compassion on the other.  She had no scruple about seeing just as much of her cousin’s humour as his looks and manner could tell her, and she perceived that at the moment it was anything but a good or heroic one.  She thought it possible that it would have been a relief to him to have struck, or shaken, or even kicked something or somebody; and yet she was not at all tempted to think the worse of him.  She did not understand, of course, the late aggravations of his trouble; but she knew that he loved loyally and thought his love in danger, and she gave him plenty of sympathy, whatever that might be worth.  She had obtained a considerable amount of influence over him, and used it, in general, for his good.  At present he was in rather an unmanageable mood, but still she did not mean to let him escape her.

“He looks dreadfully worried, poor boy!” she said to herself.  “Being shut up here day after day must be bad for him.  I shall make Sir John take him out to-morrow.”

But when to-morrow came, and Sir John paid his daily visit to his wife, she had other things to think about.  He found the servants lingering about the halls and staircases in silent excitement, and in the sick room a little group watching, as they stood round the bed, for the old man’s final falling asleep.

He had been conscious early in the morning, and spoken to both his grandchildren; but gradually, so very gradually that they could not say “he changed at such an hour,” the heavy rigidity of death closed upon his already paralysed limbs, and his eyes grew dimmer.  It was a very quiet peaceful closing of a long life, which, except that it had been sometimes hard and proud, had passed in usefulness and honour.  And so, towards sunset, some one said, “He is gone,” and laid a hand gently upon the stiffening eyelids.

Sir John took his wife away to her room, and there she leaned her head against his shoulder and cried, not very bitterly, but with real affection for her grandfather.  Maurice went away also, very grave, and thinking tenderly of the many kind words and deeds which had marked the months of his stay at Hunsdon.  And yet within half an hour, Lady Dighton was talking to her husband quite calmly about some home affairs which interested him; and Maurice had begun to calculate how soon he could get away for that long-deferred six weeks’ absence.