the same generation, he and I,' she thought,
eating bread and butter with relish, 'and we are not so very old, after
all!' Aunt Hannah was incomparably older, ripe for death. Who could be
profoundly moved by that unimportant, that trivial, demise? She felt
very sorry for Uncle Meshach, but no more than that. Such sentiments may
have the appearance of callousness, but they were the authentic
sentiments of Leonora, and Leonora was not callous. The financial aspect
of Aunt Hannah's death, as it affected John and herself and the girls
and their home, did not disturb her. She was removed far above finance,
far above any preoccupation about the latter years, as she sat talking
quietly and blissfully with Arthur in the drawing-room.

'Yes,' she was telling him, 'it was just opposite the Clayton-Vernons'
that I met them.'

'Where the elm-trees spread over the road?' he questioned.

She nodded, pleased by his minute interest in her narrative and by his
knowledge of the neighbourhood. 'I saw them both a long way off, walking
quickly, under a gas-lamp. And it's very curious, but although I was so
anxious to know what had happened, I couldn't go on to meet them--I was
obliged to wait until they came up. And they didn't notice me at first,
and then Ethel shrieked out: "Oh, it's mother!" And Milly said: "Aunt
Hannah's dead, mother. Is Uncle Meshach dead?" You can't understand how
queer I felt. I felt as if Milly would go on asking and asking: "Is
father dead? Is Bessie dead? Is Bran dead? Are you dead?"'

'I know,' he said reflectively.

She guessed that he envied her the strange nocturnal adventure. And her
secret pride in the adventure, which hitherto she had endeavoured to
suppress, suddenly became open and legitimate. She allowed her face to
disclose the thought: 'You see that I too have lived through crises, and
that I can appreciate how wonderful they are.' And she proceeded to give
him all the details of Aunt Hannah's death, as she had learnt them from
Ethel and Milly during the walk home through sleeping Hillport: how the
servant had grown alarmed, and had called a neighbour by breaking a
bedroom window with a broomstick, leaning from Aunt Hannah's window, and
how the neighbour's eldest boy had run for Dr. Adams and had caught him
in the street just as he was returning home, and how Aunt Hannah was
gone before the boy came back with Dr. Adams, and how no one could guess
what had happened to Uncle Meshach, and no one could