What a good ruler, how considerate of all the needs of her empire she meant to be! People so often prospectively good in this world; whether their goodness would come to nothing if they had the power, it is impossible to tell; but hoping for it, looking forward to it, how good they mean to be! That these feelings should exist above stairs, while such very different emotions were in the minds of the family below, where two deaths had occurred, as it were, on one day, need not surprise any one. Verna had been very sorry for the sufferers; but it was not in the nature of things that she could be more than sorry. Her own affairs were nearest to her. They and she inhabited different spheres. CHAPTER XVIII. “What did you think of them?” said Fanshawe. “She cried a great deal; she is very young and pretty. Poor child!” said Marjory. “We did not say much to each other; how could we? Indeed, you know that I cannot talk.” “I know--” said Fanshawe hastily, and then stopped short. He had done everything for them all during those sad days. It was the eve of the funeral now, and it was he who had taken every necessary care upon him; but I cannot explain how he had grown into the house. They were strangers to him a very short time before; even, it was not long since he had yawned and asked himself why he did not go away? But now it seemed to him that he had lived there all his life; that he had never had any warmer interests; that he could as soon separate himself from his life as from all that remained of the diminished family. He had brought Marjory out as her brother might have done on the eve of that melancholy ceremonial, to breathe the fresh evening breeze, and accustom herself a little to the outer world once more. He had led her, not to the cliff, but to the garden, where the associations were less overwhelming. The flower-garden was at the other side of the house, sheltered from all the sea-winds by the old Manor-house on the East, and warmly nestling into the angles of the present mansion. It was an old-fashioned garden; there were no stiff flower-beds in it, no studies of colour in red and blue and yellow; no ribbons of brown leafage, or artificial lines. In summer, old roses, old lilies--the flowers that our grandfathers loved, stood about the borders, making the whole garden sweet; but at present, in the Spring, there was little except crisp lines of crocuses and snow-drops; at one side was an avenue of limes, which had, people supposed, been the avenue of the old house. These limes were not large trees, they were too near the sea for that; but they had begun to shake out their light silken green leaves in the soft April air.