and adjusting his spectacles.

'Can ye undress yeself?' she asked him.

'Ay,' he said, 'I can do that, wench. My candle!'

And he went carefully up to bed.

CHAPTER X

IN THE GARDEN

'Father's in a horrid temper. Did anything go wrong?' said Rose, when
Leonora reached Hillport.

'No,' Leonora replied. 'Where is he?'

'In the drawing-room. He says he won't have any tea.'

'You must remember, my dear, that your father has been through a great
deal this last day or two.'

'So have all of us, as far as that goes,' Rose stated ruthlessly.
'However----' She turned away, shrugging her shoulders.

Leonora wondered by means of what sad experience Rose would ultimately
discover that, whereas men have the right to cry out when they are hurt,
it is the whole business of a woman's life to suffer in cheerful
silence. She sat with the girls during tea, drinking a cup for the sake
of form, and giving them disconnected items of information about the
funeral, which at their own passionate request they had been excused
from attending. The talk was carried on in low tones, so that the rattle
of a spoon in a saucer sounded loud and distinct. And in the
drawing-room John steadily perused the 'Signal,' column by column, from
the announcement of 'Pink Dominoes' at the Hanbridge Theatre Royal on
the first page, to the bait of a sporting bookmaker in Holland at the
end of the last. The evening was desolating, but Leonora endured it with
philosophy, because she appreciated John's state of mind.

It was the disclosure of the legacy of two hundred and fifty pounds to
Fred Ryley, and of the recent conditional revocation of that legacy,
which had galled her husband's sensibilities by bringing home to him
what he had lost through Aunt Hannah's sudden death and through the
senile whim of Uncle Meshach to alter his will. He could well have
tolerated Meshach's refusal to distribute Aunt Hannah's savings
immediately (Leonora thought), had the old man's original testament
remained uncancelled. Once upon a time, Ryley, the despised poor
relation, the offspring of an outcast from the family, was to have been
put off with two hundred and fifty pounds, and the bulk of the Myatt
joint fortune was to have passed in any case to John. The withdrawal of
the paltry legacy, as shown in the codicil, was the outward and
irritating sign that Ryley had been lifted from his humble position to
the level of John himself. John, of course, had known mon