faster as she leaned forward to watch him. Suddenly a slight movement,
like the passing away of a shadow, was visible in his face, and he opened
his eyes full on Janet. It was almost like meeting him again on the
resurrection morning, after the night of the grave.

'Robert, do you know me?'

He kept his eyes fixed on her, and there was a faintly perceptible motion
of the lips, as if he wanted to speak.

But the moment of speech was for ever gone--the moment for asking pardon
of her, if he wanted to ask it. Could he read the full forgiveness that
was written in her eyes? She never knew; for, as she was bending to kiss
him, the thick veil of death fell between them, and her lips touched a
corpse.

Chapter 25

The faces looked very hard and unmoved that surrounded Dempster's grave,
while old Mr. Crewe read the burial-service in his low, broken voice. The
pall-bearers were such men as Mr. Pittman, Mr. Lowme, and Mr. Budd--men
whom Dempster had called his friends while he was in life; and worldly
faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of
grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn
silence of night.

The one face that had sorrow in it was covered by a thick crape-veil, and
the sorrow was suppressed and silent. No one knew how deep it was; for
the thought in most of her neighbours' minds was, that Mrs. Dempster
could hardly have had better fortune than to lose a bad husband who had
left her the compensation of a good income. They found it difficult to
conceive that her husband's death could be felt by her otherwise than as
a deliverance. The person who was most thoroughly convinced that Janet's
grief was deep and real, was Mr. Pilgrim, who in general was not at all
weakly given to a belief in disinterested feeling.

'That woman has a tender heart,' he was frequently heard to observe in
his morning rounds about this time. 'I used to think there was a great
deal of palaver in her, but you may depend upon it there's no pretence
about her. If he'd been the kindest husband in the world she couldn't
have felt more. There's a great deal of good in Mrs. Dempster--a great
deal of good.'

'_I_ always said so,' was Mrs. Lowme's reply, when he made the
observation to her; 'she was always so very full of pretty attentions to
me when I was ill. But they tell me now she's turned Tryanite; if that's
it we shan't agree again. It's very inconsistent in her, I think, tu