"I
've found a lot more things," her cousin said
to her the day after the second funeral; "they're up in her
room--but they're things I wish YOU'D look at."
The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the
garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting
to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still
in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather
than the expression, of feeling something or other. Some
such appearance was in itself of course natural within
a week of his stepmother's death, within three of his
father's; but what was most present to the girl, herself
sensitive and shrewd, was that he seemed somehow
to brood without sorrow, to suffer without what she in
her own case would have called pain. He turned away
from her after this last speech--it was a good deal his
habit to drop an observation and leave her to pick it
up without assistance. If the vicar's widow, now in her
turn finally translated, had not really belonged to him it
was not for want of her giving herself, so far as he ever
would take her; and she had lain for three days all alone
at the end of the passage, in the great cold chamber
of hospitality, the dampish greenish room where visitors
slept and where several of the ladies of the parish had,
without effect, offered, in pairs and successions, piously
to watch with her. His personal connexion with the parish
was now slighter than ever, and he had really not waited
2
HYLAND
