Immediately after the funeral the will was opened, and Dr Thorne discovered that the clauses of it were exactly identical with those his friend had described to him some months back.  Nothing had been altered; nor had the document been unfolded since that strange codicil had been added, in which it was declared that Dr Thorne knew—­and only Dr Thorne—­who was the eldest child of the testator’s only sister.  At the same time, however, a joint executor with Dr Thorne had been named—­one Mr Stock, a man of railway fame—­and Dr Thorne himself was made a legatee to the humble extent of a thousand pounds.  A life income of a thousand pounds a year was left to Lady Scatcherd.

CHAPTER XXVI

WAR

We need not follow Sir Roger to his grave, nor partake of the baked meats which were furnished for his funeral banquet.  Such men as Sir Roger Scatcherd are always well buried, and we have already seen that his glories were duly told to posterity in the graphic diction of his sepulchral monument.  In a few days the doctor had returned to his quiet home, and Sir Louis found himself reigning at Boxall Hill in his father’s stead—­with, however, a much diminished sway, and, as he thought it, but a poor exchequer.  We must soon return to him and say something of his career as a baronet; but for the present, we may go back to our more pleasant friends at Greshamsbury.

But our friends at Greshamsbury had not been making themselves pleasant—­not so pleasant to each other as circumstances would have admitted.  In those days which the doctor had felt himself bound to pass, if not altogether at Boxall Hill, yet altogether away from his own home, so as to admit of his being as much as possible with his patient, Mary had been thrown more than ever with Patience Oriel, and, also, almost more than ever with Beatrice Gresham.  As regarded Mary, she would doubtless have preferred the companionship of Patience, though she loved Beatrice far the best; but she had no choice.  When she went to the parsonage Beatrice came there also, and when Patience came to the doctor’s house Beatrice either accompanied or followed her.  Mary could hardly have rejected their society, even had she felt it wise to do so.  She would in such case have been all alone, and her severance from the Greshamsbury house and household, from the big family in which she had for so many years been almost at home, would have made such solitude almost unendurable.

And then these two girls both knew—­not her secret; she had no secret—­but the little history of her ill-treatment.  They knew that though she had been blameless in this matter, yet she had been the one to bear the punishment; and, as girls and bosom friends, they could not but sympathize with her, and endow her with heroic attributes; make her, in fact, as we are doing, their little heroine for the nonce.  This was, perhaps, not serviceable for Mary; but it was far from being disagreeable.