All this was in a half-articulate whisper.  When he ceased he still bent over the body, gazing intently at it.  Even when he had exhausted the subject, and turned to go, he changed his mind, and looked again for a while.  Then he stood erect, apparently nerved and refreshed, and left the room with a firm step.  The woman was waiting outside.  Seeing that he was less distressed than when he entered, she said: 

“I hope you are satisfied, sir!”

“Delighted!  Charmed!  The arrangements are extremely pretty and tasteful.  Most consolatory.”  And he gave her half a sovereign.

“I thank you, sir,” she said, dropping a curtsey.  “The poor young lady!  She was anxious to see you, sir.  To hear her say that you were the only one that cared for her!  And so fretful with her mother, too.  ’Let him be told that I am dangerously ill,’ says she, ‘and he’ll come.’  She didn’t know how true her word was, poor thing; and she went off without being aware of it.”

“Flattering herself and flattering me.  Happy girl!”

“Bless you, I know what her feelings were, sir; I have had experience.”  Here she approached him confidentially, and whispered:  “The family were again’ you, sir, and she knew it.  But she wouldn’t listen to them.  She thought of nothing, when she was easy enough to think at all, but of your coming.  And—­hush!  Here’s the old gentleman.”

Trefusis looked round and saw Mr. Jansenius, whose handsome face was white and seamed with grief and annoyance.  He drew back from the proffered hand of his son-in-law, like an overworried child from an ill-timed attempt to pet it.  Trefusis pitied him.  The nurse coughed and retired.

“Have you been speaking to Mrs. Jansenius?” said Trefusis.

“Yes,” said Jansenius offensively.

“So have I, unfortunately.  Pray make my apologies to her.  I was rude.  The circumstances upset me.”

“You are not upset, sir,” said Jansenius loudly.  “You do not care a damn.”

Trefusis recoiled.

“You damned my feelings, and I will damn yours,” continued Jansenius in the same tone.  Trefusis involuntarily looked at the door through which he had lately passed.  Then, recovering himself, he said quietly: 

“It does not matter.  She can’t hear us.”

Before Jansenius could reply his wife hurried upstairs, caught him by the arm, and said, “Don’t speak to him, John.  And you,” she added, to Trefusis, “Will you begone?”

“What!” he said, looking cynically at her.  “Without my dead!  Without my property!  Well, be it so.”

“What do you know of the feelings of a respectable man?” persisted Jansenius, breaking out again in spite of his wife.  “Nothing is sacred to you.  This shows what Socialists are!”

“And what fathers are, and what mothers are,” retorted Trefusis, giving way to his temper.  “I thought you loved Hetty, but I see that you only love your feelings and your respectability.  The devil take both!  She was right; my love for her, incomplete as it was, was greater than yours.”  And he left the house in dudgeon.