I went away. My father and mother remained alone together for about a quarter of an hour. Then he came out of the drawing-room, called to me to get supper ready at once, and went up to his own room. I helped our one maid to put the dishes on the table, and then rushed into the drawing-room to my mother. She was sitting gazing into the fire. A stocking she had been darning lay on her lap. Her face was very pale, and when she turned round at my step, I saw by her eyes that she had just wiped tears away from them. "Rosamund," she said, in her gentle, somewhat monotonous voice, "my child, you will be disappointed--disappointed of your hope. Cousin Geoffrey is dead." I uttered a loud exclamation. "Hush," said my mother. "We must not talk about it before your father. Hush, Rosamund. Why, Rosamund, my dear, why should _you_ cry?" "No, I won't cry," I said, "only I am stunned, and--shocked." "Come in to supper," said my mother. "We will talk of this presently. Your father must not notice anything unusual. Keep all your feelings to yourself, my darling." Then she got up and kissed me. She was not a woman to kiss any one, even her own child, often. She was the sweetest woman in the world, but she found it difficult to give expression to her feelings. Her tender caress now did much to make up for the sore and absolutely certain fall of all my castles in the air. The next day, I learned from one of my brothers that Cousin Geoffrey Rutherford had been found seated by his desk, quite dead. A policeman had found him. He had seen that hall-door, which was practically never off its chain, a little ajar, and had gone in and found Cousin Geoffrey. The day but one after the news reached us, my mother got a letter from Cousin Geoffrey's lawyer. "As you are one of the nearest of kin of the deceased, it would be advisable that you should be present at the reading of the will." "I think, Andrew," said my mother, handing this letter across the table to my father, "that I will go, and take Rosamund with me; I am quite sure Geoffrey cannot have left me anything," she continued, a vivid pink coming into her cheek. "Indeed, I may add," she continued, "that under the circumstances I should not _wish_ him to leave me anything, but it would give me gratification to show him the slight respect of attending his funeral--and I own that it would also give me pleasure to see the old house and the furniture again." I had never heard my mother make such a long speech before, and I fully expected my father to interrupt it with a torrent of angry words. Even the boys turned pale as they listened to my mother. To our great astonishment her words were followed by half a moment of absolute silence. Then my father said in a quiet voice:-- "You will please yourself, of course, Mary. I have not a word of advice to give on this matter." We buried Cousin Geoffrey in Kensal Green. After the funeral was over we all returned to the old house.