If it should occur to anyone that this mood was very inappropriate to the really sympathetic nature of one who had watched over Tom Heriot’s sick-bed, and had grieved over, and fully felt the frightful blow which his death had given to the family so near at hand, we can but say in reply that even to the most sympathetic the impression produced by death is the one that is effaced most rapidly. Already Fanshawe had felt, with that impatience which is natural to humanity, that enough had been given to Tom. He could not and would not have expressed the sentiment in words; but it was a natural sentiment. Mr. Heriot’s heart-broken despondency, which was partly veiled and partly heightened by the irritability of grief, overawed the young man; but already he had begun to feel it hard upon him that Marjory, for instance, should refuse to be comforted. He himself felt healed of his momentary wound; and why did not she begin at least to allow herself to be healed also? It seemed to Fanshawe, as it seems to all except the chief sufferers in every such bereavement, that it is churlish and almost fictitious to “give way”--and that the natural thing is to get better of your grief as you do of a headache, or, at least, not to annoy and worry other people, by letting them see that it is continually there. He had felt it very much at the time, but he had got over it; and it seemed natural to him that others should get over it also. And when he met Mr. Charles and Milly coming very solemnly hand in hand round the corner of the old house, their gravity seemed almost a personal affront to him. “The child is but a child,” he said to himself; “and the old fellow is only his uncle. Much my uncle would care if I were to die! Really this is making too great a fuss,” and a certain air of disapproval came into the look with which he met them. “Going to take a walk?” he said. “We were going down to the foot of the cliff,” said Mr. Charles. “This little thing is pale, and wants the air; will you come too? It is not very high, but the cliff is bold, and I am fond of the place. No scenery, you know, no scenery,” said Mr. Charles, waving his hand towards the rocks with an air of protecting pride. “A poor thing, Sir, but mine own,” was the sentiment with which he gazed at the brown headland, the angle of the coast upon which his paternal house was placed; “but to us who were born here, it has a beauty of its own.” “It has a great deal of beauty,” said Fanshawe; “but of a desolate kind. To look out upon a sea without even a boat--” “There are plenty of boats sometimes,” said Mr. Charles, somewhat hastily; “you would not have the fishers out on the Sunday, unless when there’s some special necessity?--a great haul of herring, or such like--good food that should not be wasted, might excuse it; but without that there’s no reason. There are plenty of ships in Leith Harbour, and lying beyond Inchkeith as you would see when we crossed the Firth--”