To the lonely man it seemed strange that Mary was no longer in the cottage at Finglecombe, and it was difficult for him, for a time, to realise the idea that she was gone for ever from her place; that he would never see her again; and that morning and night would come inexorably; the weeks become months, and the months become years; and that no Mary, with all her great love and tenderness, was there to bear a part in the long vista of life that lay before him. His loneliness became at times insupportable, and he was frequently absent from home--a circumstance which never occurred in Mary's time. On these occasions the long and sleepless hours of night were terrible to little Derval, with his true Devonshire dread of the supernatural, for he had no longer the sweet consciousness of the near presence of his watchful mother. At such times, till sleep sealed his eyes, he had but one thought--that out there in the dew and darkness of night, as in the sunshine by day, was the grave of one who had loved him and tended him, as no other human being would do, in the little churchyard, where the white tombstones and crosses contrasted so strongly and beautifully with the emerald green of the turf and the darker tint of the vast ancient yew that overshadowed them. In all the wide earth--the earth of which he had, as yet, so little conception, there was already no spot so dear to little Derval as the turf that covered his mother's grave; and thus in the darkness of the moonless nights he was wont to waken and weep when he heard the cold wind sighing and the rain falling; and he shuddered at the thought that she was out there, exposed to them both, as it seemed to his heated fancy. Then a great terror would come over him, till he crept softly into bed beside old Patty Fripp. So the first heart-piercing days of sorrow and unavailing regret began to pass away, and the old craving after wealth, the world, and mammon began to resume its sway in the mind of Greville Hampton, and the dreams of which we have spoken came to his fancy again. He began to think of Mary with more composure, and could hear, in silence, Mr. Asperges Laud, when urged by him, gently and sweetly, to remember that she had only faded out, as the stars fade, to shine again; had died as the flowers die in autumn, for resurrection in a brighter summer, in which he should meet her again, and there should be neither sorrow nor parting. All this sounded and seemed too remote and vague for the ache, the bitter void made by her departure. Yet though Mr. Laud knew by experience that Father Time was a great consoler, there was another nearer at hand than his Reverence had quite reckoned on.