ophe. As yet, of course, we knew
nothing of the clot of blood. Presently Barbara came in and put her
hands on my shoulders.

"I must stay here, Hilary, dear. You must get a bed at your club.
Jaffery will take the car and bring us what we want from Northlands, and
will look after things with Eileen. And put off Euphemia and the others,
if you can."

And that was the Christmas to which we had looked forward with such
joyous anticipation. Adrian dead; his child stillborn: Doria hovering on
the brink of life and death. I did what was possible on a Christmas eve
in the way of last arrangements. But to-morrow was Christmas Day. The
day after, Boxing Day. The day after that, Sunday. The whole world was
dead. And all those awful days the thin yellow fog that was not fog but
mere blight of darkness hung over the vast city.

God spare me such another Christmastide.

CHAPTER XI

The first stages of our grievous task were accomplished. We had buried
Adrian in Highgate Cemetery with the yellow fog around us. His mother
had been put into a train that would carry her to the quiet country
cottage wherein she longed to be alone with her sorrow. Doria still lay
in the Valley of the Shadow unconscious, perhaps fortunately, of the
stealthy footsteps and muffled sounds that strike a note of agony
through a house of death. And it was many days before she awoke to
knowledge and despair. Barbara stayed with her.

We had found Adrian's will, leaving everything to Doria and appointing
Jaffery and myself joint executors and trustees for his wife and the
child that was to come, among his private papers in the Louis XV cabinet
in the drawing-room. We had consulted his bankers and put matters in a
solicitor's hands with a view to probate. Everything was in order. We
found his own personal bills and receipts filed, his old letters tied up
in bundles and labelled, his contracts, his publisher's returns, his
lease, his various certificates neatly docketed. It was the private desk
of a careful business man, rather than that of our old unmethodical
Adrian. There are few things more painful than to pry into the
intimacies of those we have loved; and Jaffery and I had to pry alone,
because Doria, who might have saved our obligatory search from
impertinence, lay, herself, on the Borderland.

All that we required for the simple settlement of his affairs had been
found in the cabinet. On the list of assets for probate we had placed
the manusc