‘I am afraid of more than neglect,’ she replied promptly; ’but I hope my fears may turn out illusory, and that possibly they may be avoided.  And now, for a few hours at least, let us think of something else.  I rather like that Doctor Bryerly.  I could not get him to say what I wanted.  I don’t think he’s Scotch, but he is very cautious, and I am sure, though he would not say so, that he thinks of the matter exactly as I do.  He says that those fine people, who are named as his co-trustees, won’t take any trouble, and will leave everything to him, and I am sure he is right.  So we must not quarrel with him, Maud, nor call him hard names, although he certainly is intolerably vulgar and ugly, and at times very nearly impertinent—­I suppose without knowing, or indeed very much caring.’

We had a good deal to think of, and talked incessantly.  There were bursts and interruptions of grief, and my kind cousin’s consolations.  I have often since been so lectured for giving way to grief, that I wonder at the patience exercised by her during this irksome visit.  Then there was some reading of that book whose claims are always felt in the terrible days of affliction.  After that we had a walk in the yew garden, that quaint little cloistered quadrangle—­the most solemn, sad, and antiquated of gardens.

’And now, my dear, I must really leave you for two or three hours.  I have ever so many letters to write, and my people must think I’m dead by this time.’

So till tea-time I had poor Mary Quince, with her gushes of simple prattle and her long fits of vacant silence, for my companion.  And such a one, who can con over by rote the old friendly gossip about the dead, talk about their ways, and looks, and likings, without much psychologic refinement, but with a simple admiration and liking that never measured them critically, but always with faith and love, is in general about as comfortable a companion as one can find for the common moods of grief.

It is not easy to recall in calm and happy hours the sensations of an acute sorrow that is past.  Nothing, by the merciful ordinance of God, is more difficult to remember than pain.  One or two great agonies of that time I do remember, and they remain to testify of the rest, and convince me, though I can see it no more, how terrible all that period was.

Next day was the funeral, that appalling necessity; smuggled away in whispers, by black familiars, unresisting, the beloved one leaves home, without a farewell, to darken those doors no more; henceforward to lie outside, far away, and forsaken, through the drowsy heats of summer, through days of snow and nights of tempest, without light or warmth, without a voice near.  Oh, Death, king of terrors!  The body quakes and the spirit faints before thee.  It is vain, with hands clasped over our eyes, to scream our reclamation; the horrible image will not be excluded.  We have just the word spoken eighteen hundred years ago, and our trembling faith.  And through the broken vault the gleam of the Star of Bethlehem.