d
was overcome with sympathy for the lonely girl. She found Angela
sitting by a small fire in her own little morning-room on the upper
floor. A tray with something to eat had been set beside her, she knew
not by whom, but she had not tasted anything. Her eyes were dry, but
her hands were burning and when she was conscious of feeling anything
she knew that her head ached. She had forgotten that she had sent for
the governess, and looked at her with a vaguely wondering expression
as if she took the kindly Frenchwoman in black for a new shadow in her
dream.

But presently mechanical consciousness returned, though without much
definite sensation, and she let Madame Bernard have her way in
everything, not making the slightest resistance or offering the
smallest suggestion; she even submitted to being fed like a little
child, with small mouthfuls of things that had no taste whatever for
her.

By and by there was a dressmaker in the room, with an assistant, and
servants brought a number of big bandboxes with lids covered with
black oilcloth; and Angela's maid was there, too, and they tried one
thing after another on her, ready-made garments for the first hours of
mourning. Then they were gone, and she was dressed in black, and the
room was filled with the unmistakable odour of black crape, which is
not like anything else in the world.

Again time passed, and she was kneeling at a faldstool in the great
hall downstairs; but a dark screen had been placed so that she could
not be seen by any one who came in to kneel at the rail that divided
the upper part of the hall from the lower; and she saw nothing
herself--nothing but a Knight of Malta, in his black cloak with the
great white Maltese cross on his shoulder, lying asleep on his back;
and on each side of him three enormous wax torches were burning in
silver candlesticks taller than a tall man.

Quite at the end of the hall, five paces from the Knight's motionless
head, three priests in black and silver vestments were kneeling before
a black altar, reciting the Penitential Psalms in a quiet, monotonous
voice, verse and verse, the one in the middle leading; and Angela
automatically joined the two assistants in responding, but so low that
they did not hear her.

The Knight bore a resemblance to her father, that was all. Perhaps it
was only a waxen image she saw, or a wraith in that long dream of
hers, of which she could not quite remember the beginning. She knew
that she w