“You fash yourself for nought, sir,” she said often to Cyrille. “Our folks are as Nature made them: you will never alter them. They think their own ways best, and they see no harm in a knife or a musket-shot when there is any score to be wiped out. They will never listen to you, not if you’re here fifty years.” “They will come to understand me in time,” he said to himself; but there are some things which even time cannot touch, and amongst these things are many human hearts. In appealing to their indulgence or to their gratitude, or to their intelligence, he appealed to qualities which did not exist. When he had taken his coffee he sat on, beside the fire, instead of going to bed, a bad habit as he knew; but he had been a _viveur_ in the fashionable clubs of S. Petersburg, and used to turn night into day; he seldom did so now, for his days were laborious, and he kept labourer’s hours usually. He looked into the wide hearth and on to the red-hot oak logs and the crimson ashes, and in them he saw faces dear to him, on which his eyes would probably never look again--one face most often of all, fair, pale, proud, tender, with the gleam of diamonds in the hair and at the throat; a woman who loved him and whom he loved--a woman who was not his. Where was she this night? It was past midnight now in Russia as here in Latium. Was she, as he had so often seen her, the sought of all courtiers at some imperial ball? Was she present at some ice fête on some frozen arm of the Neva, in the light of a million torches, with the waltz music of Strauss throbbing on her ear? Anyhow, everywhere, forever, he felt that she was dead to him. III. The old man was buried next day, the steward lending the mules and the cart; Lucio alone accompanied the coffin, grumbling at the injustice of his brother in putting every disagreeable task upon his shoulders. Why trouble about a dead man more than about a dead fox? Why not tumble out the deal box into the nearest ditch? At a turn in the road a horse crossed their path. The rider was Cyrille. “I will come with you,” he said, “and discharge the fees.” He knew that if left to himself, Lucio, were he trusted with the money, would probably toss the coffin into the first ravine which was deep enough to tell no tales. “No need to fatigue yourself so, sir,” said Lucio, greatly disconcerted. “If you be good enough to wish to pay the burying you can give me the money. There is no need for you to fag yourself coming to the town.” “I will go with you,” said Cyrille, knowing that the money, if it left his hands, would never reach the graveyard.