“That is of no consequence whatever. I shall wait until after your mother’s funeral before writing your father and having our engagement announced, and within a month I shall come to Iowa to marry you.” And Anne, seeing this sweet refuge open to her, took heart of grace and comfort. Clavering himself, sitting in his darkened library, was in no way awed by death having invaded his house. He had been brought face to face with it too often to be afraid of it; he was a genuine, throughgoing disbeliever in everything except money and power, and he regarded the end of life as being an interesting but unimportant event. His wife’s death was most opportune for him; it made it certain that Elizabeth Darrell would marry him. He had fully realized that stubborn prejudice on Elizabeth’s part against divorce, and although he had not seriously doubted his ability to overcome it, yet it had been stubborn. Now all was smoothed away. He would act with perfect propriety, under the circumstances; he surmised enough about the women of Elizabeth’s class to understand that a breach of decorum would shock her far more than a breach of morals. There would be no outward breach of decorum. He would wait until after the funeral before writing her; but it would be useless, hypocritical, and even dangerous to postpone writing longer. With these thoughts in his mind he sat through the day, receiving and answering telegrams, scanning the newspapers, and digesting his own disgrace as exposed in print. Even that had come at a fortunate time for him—if there is a fortunate time to be branded a thief, a liar, and a perjurer, a suborner of perjury, a corrupter of courts, a purchaser of legislatures. Elizabeth would feel sorry for him; she wouldn’t understand the thing at all. He would insist on being married in the autumn, and Elizabeth would no doubt be glad to be married as far away from Washington as possible. Perhaps she might agree to meet him in London and be married there. He would go over in the summer, take the finest house to be had for money, and transport all the superb equipment of his Washington establishment to London. He also remembered with satisfaction that he had now nothing to fear on the score of divorce from that soft–spoken, wooden–headed, fire–eating old impracticable, General Brandon, with his fatal tendency to settle with the pistol questions concerning “the ladies of his family.” In these reflections and considerations James Clavering passed the first day of his widowerhood. On the third day after Mrs. Clavering’s death the great house was shut up and silent. The Claverings left it, never to return to it. It stood vacant, a monument of man’s vicissitudes.