ad always accepted
in simple faithfulness the statement that those who were gone 'knew
now,' as the phrase runs; and it comforted him to think that all he
might have said to her when she was alive was clearly understood by his
mother at last.

By two o'clock the big house was empty of guests and given over to
silence, or to the sound of hushed footsteps about the stairs, or to
the weeping of maids as they assembled in little groups in the
corridors and spoke with sobs of the mistress whom they had served
faithfully. Each room that had lately given up its tenant showed a
disordered interior, with paper strewn here and there. Or some maid
left behind to pack her mistress's heavier luggage could be seen
kneeling before open trunks and deftly arranging their contents.

A grey-haired butler approached his master when the last of the
carriages had driven away, and begged him to eat some luncheon, and
informed him that Miss Erskine was still in the library.

'Send something there,' said Peter briefly.

For a moment Jane could only weep, and they clung to each other,
saying, with the helplessness of the suddenly bereaved, 'Isn't it
awful?' Then, as they began to grow calmer, Peter administered what
comfort he could, and tried in his kindly way to induce the girl to eat
something.

'You must eat, you know,' he said, 'and it will do you good. It has
been a terrible time for you. And then I think you ought to go back
and lie down for a bit.'

If it is true that a woman suggests beef-tea as a universal panacea for
all ills, it is certain, on the other hand, that a man believes that a
woman always feels better for lying down.

'I should like to wait,' Jane said, 'until Sir Edward arrives, and to
hear what he has to say.'

A footman came in to clear away lunch, and then the two lovers went and
sat together on the library sofa, and looked out on the long stretches
of gardens with their cold precision and want of sympathy. A
luggage-cart, piled high with dress-baskets and portmanteaux, passed
down the drive towards the station gates, and a motor-car returned from
a neighbouring house for something that had been forgotten. After that
there was silence both within and without the house; even the maids had
gone downstairs to sit together and whisper. It was one of those grey
days in early autumn which have an almost weird sense of stillness
about them. Hardly a leaf stirred, and even the flight of the birds
was noise