I did not know what that feeling of despair meant then. It only frightened me. I know what it meant, only too well, now. I despaired, because it is impossible that he can ever love me. And no one could see him and know him without feeling that life without his love is dry, purposeless—a living death. Oh! why did you bring him here, and ask him to take me? Poor, dear father! I thought you could not be mistaken in any one, and you are certainly not mistaken in your estimate of _him_. But when you thought _he_ could love _me_, how you exaggerated me, how your kind eyes saw your poor child in a false light! I—his companion—his—wife! Impossible! The whole world would laugh, would stare! and I should be sick with shame, as I was to-day. I told him, two days before, that he must go away. I begged him to go away. He did not. He thinks he ought to sacrifice himself. So he stayed for the “funeral,” as they call it. (Why not good Saxon _burial_?) Father, you never treated me wrongly till now. Now you have wronged your child. When you were dying, you did what you thought best for me. But—to-day—the shame of it! Your brothers, Mr. Pym and Mr. Edmund Pym, came for the burial. Roderick did not come, it was said he was ill; but his brother Herbert, the clergyman, you used to laugh at to Roderick, and call the “family prig,” came. They followed your coffin through the pouring rain in carriages. I sat in my room alone—I could not even bear Mammy Mervyn with me—feeling cold and half-dead. While they were seeing your coffin put into the ground I was listening to the clatter of plates and dishes, and the footsteps of the servants laying the luncheon which those people were to eat when they came back. I heard the carriages coming back like carriages in a dream. Then Mammy Mervyn would come in with a cup of beef-tea. She took me in her arms and dropped tears on to me, which made me drink the beef-tea, as the less disagreeable of the two. She told me the will was to be read, and Mr. Moffatt said I must come down; and she made me put on that dreadful black gown, which you would dislike, I know, as much as I do. I went downstairs with her. She asked me if I thought I should “break down.” I said the truth: “Mammy, I feel there is nothing of me to break down.” The room was dreadfully light. I could not make out which was which of the men in black standing about, till _he_ came up to me and took my hand; and the touch of him fired up my life like a flaming match fires spirits of wine. Then I again saw—heard—thought—and suffered the anguish of your loss acutely. The lawyer, sitting at _your_ table, in _your_ chair, read your will, and the awful shame settled about me that I shall never be able to lift off myself, never! You left all your money and property to _him_, with the condition that he married me. That was all. You never made any arrangement for anyone else, or for anything else, should he refuse, or _I_ refuse.