Mr. Tredgold had no relations to speak of, and not very many old friends. Mr. Turny the elder, who was one of Mr. Tredgold’s executors, came down for the funeral, and so did the solicitor, Mr. Sturgeon, who was the head of a great city firm, and would certainly not have spared the time had the fortune that was now to become a subject of so much interest been less great. He brought with him a shabby man, who was in his office and carried a black bag with papers, and also turned out to be Mr. Tredgold’s brother, the only other member of the family who was known. His appearance was a surprise to Katherine, who had not heard of his existence. She was aware there had been aunts, married and bearing different names, and that it was possible perhaps to find cousins with those designations, which, however, she was not acquainted with; but an uncle was a complete surprise to her. And indeed, to tell the truth, to say “uncle” to this shambling individual in the long old great-coat, which she recognised as a very ancient garment of her father’s, was not a pleasant sensation. She shrank from the lean, grey, hungry, yet humble being who evidently was very little at his ease sitting at the same table with his master, though he attempted, from time to time, to produce himself with a hesitating speech. “He was my brother, you know--I was his brother, his only brother,” which he said several times in the course of the long dreadful evening which preceded the funeral day. Katherine in compassion carried off this new and terrible relative into the drawing-room while the two men of business discoursed together. Mr. Robert Tredgold did not like to be carried off from the wine. He saw in this step precautionary measures to which he was accustomed, though Katharine did not even know of any occasion for precaution--and followed her sulkily, not to the drawing-room, but to that once gay little room which had been the young ladies’ room in former days. Katherine had gone back to it with a sentiment which she herself did not question or trace to its origin, but which no doubt sprang from the consciousness in her mind that Stella was on her way home, and that there was no obstacle now in the way of her return. She would have been horrified to say in words that her father was the obstacle who had been removed, and the shock and awe of death were still upon her. But secretly her heart had begun to rise at the thought of Stella, and that it would be her happy office to bring Stella home. “It ain’t often I have the chance of a good glass of wine,” Robert Tredgold said; “your poor father was a rare judge of wine, and then you see he had always the money to spend on it. My poor brother would have given me a chance of a glass of good wine if he’d brought me here.” “Would you like the wine brought here? I thought you would be happier,” said Katherine, “with me than with those gentlemen.”