But it was with an agitated heart, and a countenance out of which she could not altogether banish her excitement, that she went down stairs, when old Fleming rang that inevitable bell for dinner. Dinner! with what weary disgust Marjory thought of it, and of the compulsory meeting with all the party, the solemn sitting down to table, the politenesses to Mr. Fanshawe, the efforts she would have to make to interpose herself between her father’s irritable grief and her uncle Charles’s amiable but sometimes untimely wisdom. She changed one black gown for another rapidly, and smoothed her brown hair, which (strangely she felt) kept its bright colour notwithstanding her mourning. What a farce, she thought to herself, (being bitter and sore) that mourning was? It had just as many troublesome accessories as the gayest dress, nay, almost more; for the most heart-broken of women in the deepest of affliction has got to take care of her crape, that dear and odious addition to all mourning garments. From this it is not to be supposed that Marjory was impatient of her crape. She would not have cheated poor Tom out of a single fold, she would have enveloped herself in it from head to foot rather than fail in any prejudice of respect. But her heart was sore and her mind excited. Nothing seemed to her to be true. Tom had deceived her, leading her to suppose that some matter worthy of her ears was to be revealed to her; and lo! it was but this vulgar, poor, conventional, common sort of secret; and even she herself was a deceiver, for did she not pretend to mourn for Tom even now, when she had begun to feel that perhaps his death was expedient? All in the house gave themselves out to be mourning for poor Tom; yet Uncle Charles had recovered his interest in everything that was going on, and little Milly in the afternoon had laughed--Mr. Fanshawe, who was Tom’s friend, and ought to have been more faithful to the poor fellow’s memory, having inveigled the child into it. Thus the party would meet, she said to herself, all longing to escape from this gloom, and talk and think like others, but dared not for Falsehood’s sake; and she herself, the falsest of all, even saw good in the calamity, and gave thanks for it. What treachery, what untruthfulness was in all this! The only one who was utterly true in his grief, was the one who would have most chiefly suffered by Tom’s further life if he had carried his fancy out--the heartbroken father to whom Marjory, to-morrow, no later, would have to carry Tom’s bills, the bills about which, alas! poor Tom had not told the truth. What a confused tangle of falsehood, and pain, and unreality it was!