"Of course that would have been best of all. But he was Harry just the same, and that’s what matters most to Lady Brent." "Oh, yes, I know. But all the rest does matter to her, poor dear, and I don’t wonder at it—for her. Everything that meant so much to her has come to an end. He was the last Brent, and even Royd itself is nothing to her now. I should think that was a great pity myself, if it were anybody else. I think she would have liked to talk about it to me, after the first. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t now—only to you. You’re the only person who really knows how little it matters—to me." Jane was silent. She had heard that talk, and tried to adjust her mind to it. Her father, deeply shocked at Harry’s death, and of some comfort to her in his exposition of the Christian faith in immortality, had yet let his mind run upon some aspects of the loss that had seemed to her, in the first outbreak of her grief, almost to belittle it. He had talked about the loss to Viola, not only of Harry, but of what she would have had as Harry’s wife—even as his widow. He had taken it for granted that some day she would get over her grief at Harry’s death. It was not to be expected that she would think of the material benefits that would have come to her, now; but afterwards she would. Was this so? Jane had talked to her mother, who had told her, striving hard to be honest with her, that few people were altogether free from worldly desires when they grew older, and that the most bitter grief was assuaged by time. Jane had listened, but held to her opinion that Viola would never get over Harry’s loss, and that nothing she had lost besides would ever matter to her. But she had been a little shaken. Now she felt that she was justified in her faith in Viola. Not even the loss of all that saddened others who also loved Harry, but not as she did, mattered to her; the loss of those things to herself she did not think about, nor ever would. They had come a long way through the ride. "I’m going to take you to a place I haven’t been to since Harry died," Viola said, as she turned to a faintly defined track through the wood. "I’ve wanted to go, but I couldn’t by myself." She spoke without more emotion than had marked her speech hitherto, and as they threaded their way through the trees, which grew closely here, she told Jane how Harry had led her to the woodland pool on the morning after they had first met, and how they had spent long summer hours in that green retreat, happy in their love. Jane felt that she was going to a holy place. Harry had never mentioned this secret pool to her, though he had shown her many secrets of the woods. The hardly discernible path by which they had turned aside was soon lost in the tangle of undergrowth. Viola told her that they had never gone to the pool by the same way, so as not to leave a track; but she went on unhesitatingly, "I think I could find my way to it blindfold," she said.