as you choose,” he said, in a gentle, humouring tone.  He had not called her ‘Mrs. Plover’ for years.  She thought the hour badly chosen for verbal pleasantry, but he was so kind that she made no complaint.  Thus there were six people at Sophia’s funeral, including Mr. Critchlow.  No refreshments were offered.  The mourners separated at the church.  When both funerals were accomplished Cyril sat down and played the harmonium softly, and said that it had kept well in tune.  He was extraordinarily soothing.

He had now reached the age of thirty-three.  His habits were as industrious as ever, his preoccupation with his art as keen.  But he had achieved no fame, no success.  He earned nothing, living in comfort on an allowance from his mother.  He seldom spoke of his plans and never of his hopes.  He had in fact settled down into a dilletante, having learnt gently to scorn the triumphs which he lacked the force to win.  He imagined that industry and a regular existence were sufficient justification in themselves for any man’s life.  Constance had dropped the habit of expecting him to astound the world.  He was rather grave and precise in manner, courteous and tepid, with a touch of condescension towards his environment; as though he were continually permitting the perspicacious to discern that he had nothing to learn—­if the truth were known!  His humour had assumed a modified form.  He often smiled to himself.  He was unexceptionable.

On the day after Sophia’s funeral he set to work to design a simple stone for his aunt’s tomb.  He said he could not tolerate the ordinary gravestone, which always looked, to him, as if the wind might blow it over, thus negativing the idea of solidity.  His mother did not in the least understand him.  She thought the lettering of his tombstone affected and finicking.  But she let it pass without comment, being secretly very flattered that he should have deigned to design a stone at all.

Sophia had left all her money to Cyril, and had made him the sole executor of her will.  This arrangement had been agreed with Constance.  The sisters thought it was the best plan.  Cyril ignored Mr. Critchlow entirely, and went to a young lawyer at Hanbridge, a friend of his and of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton’s.  Mr. Critchlow, aged and unaccustomed to interference, had to render accounts of his trusteeship to this young man, and was incensed.  The estate was proved at over thirty-five thousand pounds.  In the main, Sophia had been careful, and had even been parsimonious.  She had often told Constance that they ought to spend money much more freely, and she had had a few brief fits of extravagance.  But the habit of stern thrift, begun in 1870 and practised without any intermission till she came to England in 1897, had been too strong for her theories.  The squandering of money pained her.  And she could not, in her age, devise expensive tastes.