While all this was going on upstairs, the two gentlemen were sitting over their dinner, with still a little excitement, a little gloom hovering over them, but on the whole comfortable, returning to their usual ways of thinking and usual calm of mind. Even to those most intimately concerned, death is one of the things to which the human mind most easily accustoms itself. Mr. Loseby was more new than Heathcote was to the aspect of the house, from which for the time all its usual inhabitants and appearances had gone. He said ‘Poor Mountford!’ two or three times in the course of dinner, and stopped to give an account of the claret on which the late master of the house had much prided himself. ‘And very good it is,’ Mr. Loseby said. ‘I suppose, unless the widow reserves it for her own use--and I don’t believe she knows it from Gladstone claret at 12_s._ a dozen--there will be a sale.’ This intruded a subject which was even more interesting than the will and all that must flow from it. ‘What do you intend to do?’ Now Heathcote Mountford was not very happy, any more than the other members of the household. He had gone through a disappointment too. Heathcote had but one person in the world who had been of any importance in his past life, and that was his young brother Edward, now at Sandhurst. It had been settled that Edward and a number of his comrades should come to Mount for the dance, but when Heathcote had signified his wish, after all this was over, that Edward should come for the funeral, the young man had refused. “Why should I? You will all be as dull as ditch-water; and I never knew our kinsman as you call him. You are dismal by nature, Heathcote, old boy,’ the young man had said, ‘but not I--why should I come to be another mute? Can’t you find enough without me?’ Edward, who was very easily moved when his own concerns were in question, was as obstinate as the rest of the Mountfords as to affairs which did not concern himself. He paid no attention to his brother’s plea for a little personal consolation. And Heathcote, who regarded the young fellow as a father regards his spoiled child, was disappointed. To be sure, he represented to himself, Edward too had been disappointed; he had lost his ball, which was a thing of importance to him, and the settlement of his affairs, for which he had been looking with such confidence, was now indefinitely postponed. Edward had not been an easy boy to manage; he had not been a very good boy. He had been delicate and wayward and spoiled--spoiled as much by the elder brother who was thoroughly aware how wrong it was, as by the mother who had been foolish about Edward, and had died when he was still so young that spoiling did not matter much. Heathcote had carried the process on, he had vowed to himself that, so far as was possible, the delicate boy should not miss his mother’s tenderness; and he had kept his word, and ruined the boy. Edward had got everything he wanted from his brother, so long as he