He turned away from her, and went to the ’window.  Jessie moved a little nearer.

‘Do you mean that?’ she asked.

‘Mean it?’ he repeated, ’why, yes, as much as I mean anything.  Be off; you’re keeping that poor devil in the snow.’

’Mr. Dagworthy, I shall be here, and you daren’t pretend to forget, or to say you weren’t in earnest.’

He laughed and waved his hand.

‘Be off to your carriage!’

Jessie moved to the door reluctantly; but he did not turn again, and she departed.

CHAPTER XIX

THE COMPLETION OF MISCHANCE

Upon Emily had fallen silence.  The tongue which for three months had incessantly sounded in her ears, with its notes of wailing, of upbraiding, of physical pain, of meaningless misery, was at rest for ever.  As she stood beside the grave—­the grave whose earth had not had time to harden since it received her father—­she seemed still to hear that feeble, querulous voice, with its perpetual iteration of her own name; the casting of clay upon the coffin made a sound not half so real.  Returning home, she went up to the bedroom with the same hurried step with which she had been wont to enter after her brief absences.  The bed was vacant; the blind made the air dim; she saw her breath rise before her.

There remained but a little servant-girl, who, coming to the sitting-room to ask about meals, stood crying with her apron held to her eyes.  Emily spoke to her almost with tender kindness.  Her own eyes had shed but few tears; she only wept on hearing those passages read which, by their promise of immortal life, were to her as mockery of her grief.  She did not venture to look into the grave’s mouth she dreaded lest there might be visible some portion of her father’s coffin.

Mrs. Baxendale, the Cartwrights, and one or two other friends had attended the funeral.  At Emily’s request no one accompanied her home.  Mrs. Baxendale drove her to the door, and went on to Dunfield.

The last link with the past was severed—­almost, it seemed, the last link with the world.  A sense of loneliness grew about her heart; she lived in a vast solitude, whither came faintest echoes of lamentation, the dying resonance of things that had been.  It could hardly be called grief, this drawing off of the affections, this desiccation of the familiar kindnesses which for the time seemed all her being.  She forced herself to remember that the sap of life would flow again, that love would come back to her when the hand of death released her from its cruel grip; as yet she could only be sensible of her isolation, her forlorn oneness.  It needs a long time before the heart can companion only with memories.  About its own centre it wraps such warm folds of kindred life.  Tear these away, how the poor heart shivers in its nakedness.