And then, in Ruth's confused remembrance of what followed, all the world seemed to have turned to black and gray. There was no color anywhere, where all had been color before. Miles of black cloth and crape seemed to extend before her; black horses came and stamped black hoof-marks in the snow before the door. Endless arrangements had to be made, endless letters to be written. Something was carried heavily down-stairs, all in black, scoring the wall at the turn on the stairs in a way which would have annoyed Lady Deyncourt exceedingly if she had been there to see it, but she had left several days before it happened. The last pale shadow of the kind, gay little grandmother was gone from the great front bedroom up-stairs. Mr. Alwynn, one of Ruth's uncles, came up from the country and went to the funeral, and took Ruth away afterwards. Her own sister Anna was abroad with her husband, her brother Raymond had not been heard of for years. As she drove away from the house, and looked up at the windows with wide tearless eyes, she suddenly realized that this departure was final, that there would be no coming back, no home left for her in the familiar rooms where she and another had lived so long together. Mr. Alwynn was by her side in the carriage, patting her cold hands and telling her not to cry, which she felt no inclination to do; and then, seeing the blank pallor in her face, he suddenly found himself fumbling for his own pocket-handkerchief. CHAPTER II. On this particular July afternoon Mr. Alwynn, or, as his parishioners called him, "The Honorable John," was sitting in his arm-chair in the little drawing-room of Slumberleigh Rectory. Mrs. Honorable John was pouring out tea; and here, once and for all, let it be known that meals, particularly five o'clock tea, will occupy a large place in this chronicle, not because of any importance especially attaching to them, but because in the country, at least in Slumberleigh, the day is not divided by hours but by the meals that take place therein, and to write of Slumberleigh and its inhabitants with disregard to their divisions of time is "impossible, and cannot be done." So I repeat, boldly, Mr. and Mrs. Alwynn were at tea. They were alone together, for they had no children, and Ruth Deyncourt, who had been living with them since her grandmother's death in the winter, was now staying with her cousin, Mrs. Ralph Danvers, at Atherstone, a couple of miles away.