he neighborhood had paid due honor to Godfrey Thorne.
Old Garnett, who was kept at home by his gout, had written a letter of
condolence to Mrs. Middleton, and expressed his deep regret at his
enforced absence. She was pleased with the letter. She did not care for
Dick Garnett, but he had known her brother all his life. She would not
have been so pleased, perhaps, had she seen old Dick grinning and
showing his fierce old teeth as he wrote it: "Ought to have been
there--believe I was his best man fifty years ago. But half a century
takes the shine out of most things--and people too." He shrugged his
shoulders, eyed the last sentence he had written, and perceiving a
little space at the end of a line, put in an adjective to make it rather
warmer. "Won't show," he said to himself--"looks very natural. Lord!
what a farce it all is! Fifty years ago there was Thorne, like a fool,
worshipping the very ground Fanny Harvey trod on, and a few years later
he wasn't particularly sorry to put her safe underneath it. Wonderful
coal-scuttle of a bonnet she wore that wedding-day, to be sure! And I
was best man!" Dick chuckled at the thought. "I shouldn't look much like
best man now. Ah, well! I mayn't be best, but I'm a better man than old
Godfrey to-day, anyhow." (And so, no doubt, for this world's affairs,
Richard Garnett was, on the principle that "a living dog is better than
a dead lion.") "And the candlemaker's daughter begins her reign, for
that poor lad will never marry. Upon my word, I believe I'm a better man
than Master Horace now. And I'm not likely to play the fool with
physic-bottles, either: I know a little better than _that_." No, Aunt
Harriet would not have liked Garnett's train of thought as he folded and
addressed the letter which pleased her. And yet the old fellow meant the
best he could.

And now it was all over, and Brackenhill would know Godfrey Thorne no
more. But for that one day he was still all-powerful, for they had met
to hear his will read.

Horace sat by the table with an angry line between his brows, and
balanced a paper-knife on his finger. He tried to appear composed, but a
shiver of impatience ran through him more than once, and the color came
and went on his cheek. His mother was by his side, controlling her face
to a rigidly funereal expression. But the effort was evident.

Godfrey Hammond said to himself, "Those two expect the worst. And if the
worst comes, if Percival is mistaken and Horace is cut