The doctor, who, of course, was one of the party, did his best to introduce a little variety into the monotonous meetings, but John Trevanion’s sombre countenance at the foot of the table was enough to have silenced any man, even had not the silence of Mrs. Trevanion and the tendency of Rosalind to sudden tears been enough to keep him in check. Dr. Beaton, however, was Reginald’s only comfort. They kept up a running talk, which perhaps even to the others was grateful, as covering the general gloom. Reginald had been much subdued by hearing that he was to return to school as soon as the funeral was over. He had found very little sympathy with his claims anywhere, and he was very glad to fall back upon the doctor. Indeed, if Highcourt was to be so dull as this, Rex could not but think school was far better. “Of course, I never meant,” he said to his sister, “to give up school--a fellow can’t do that. It looks as if he had been sent away. And now there’s those tiresome examinations for everything, even the Guards.” “We shall be very dull for a long time,” said Rosalind. “How could it be possible otherwise? But you will cheer us up when you come home for the holidays; and, oh, Rex, you must always stand by mamma!” “By mamma!” Rex said, with some surprise. “Why, she will be very well off--better off than any of us.” He had not any chivalrous feeling about his mother. Such a feeling we all think should spring up spontaneously in a boy’s bosom, especially if he has seen his mother ill-used and oppressed; but, as a matter of fact, this assumption is by no means to be depended on. A boy is at least as likely to copy a father who rails against women, and against the one woman in particular who is his wife, as to follow a vague general rule, which he has never seen put in practice, of respect and tender reverence for woman. Reginald had known his mother as the doer of everything, the endurer of everything. He had never heard that she had any weakness to be considered, and had never contemplated the idea that she should be put upon a pedestal and worshipped; and if he did not hit by insight of nature upon some happy medium between the two, it was not, perhaps, his fault. In the meantime, at all events, no sentiment on the subject inspired his boyish bosom. Mrs. Trevanion, as these days went on, resumed gradually her former habits, so far as was possible in view of the fact that all her married life had been devoted to her husband’s service, and that she had dropped one by one every pursuit that separated her from him. The day before the funeral she came into the little morning-room in which Rosalind was sitting, and drew a chair to the fire. “I had almost forgotten the existence of this room,” she said. “So many things have dropped away from me. I forget what I used to do. What used I to do, Rosalind, before--” She looked up with a pitiful smile. And, indeed, it seemed to both of them as if they had not sat quietly together, undisturbed, for years.