Mr. Morningside had liked his brother-in-law as well as it was in him to like any man, and had been horrified at that sudden inexplicable doom; but Sir Godfrey being snatched off this earth in the flower of his age, Mr. Morningside thought it only natural that the young Morningsides should derive some benefit, immediate or contingent, from their uncle’s estate. It was, therefore, with some disgust that he heard that clause in the will which gave Jessica’s sons the preference over all the sons of Ruth. True that, failing any son of Jessica’s, the estate was to lapse to the eldest surviving son of Ruth; but what earthly value was such a reversionary interest as this in the case of a lady whose nursery was like a rabbit warren? “I congratulate you on your eldest boy’s prospects, Grenville,” said Mr. Morningside, sourly. “Your Tom,” a boy whom he hated, “will come into a very fine thing one of these days.” “Humph,” muttered Grenville, “Lady Carmichael’s is a good life, and I should be very sorry to see it shortened. Besides, who can tell? Before this time next year there may be a nearer claimant.” “Lord have mercy upon us,” exclaimed Morningside, “I never thought of _that_ contingency.” CHAPTER IX. “Poor girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed, And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursèd bands; To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow, And the next day will be a day of sorrow.” Life falls back into old grooves after calamities the most stupendous. After fires—after plagues—after earthquakes—people breakfast and dine, marry and are given in marriage. A few more graves testify to the fever that has decimated a city; a ruined village here and there along the smiling southern shore, shells that were once houses, churches beneath whose shivered domes no worshipper dare ever kneel again, bear witness to the earthquake; but the monotonous commonplace of life goes on all the same in city and village, on hill and sea-shore. And so when Godfrey Carmichael was laid in his grave, when the police had exhausted their ingenuity in the vain endeavour to fathom the secret of his death—when the coroner had adjourned and again adjourned his inquiry, and an open verdict had been pronounced, life in Cheriton House resumed its old order, and the room in which the bridegroom had lain murdered at the feet of the bride was again thrown open to the sun and air, and to the sound of voices, and to the going and coming of daily life. Lady Cheriton would have had the room closed; for a year at least, she pleaded; but her husband told her that to make it a sealed chamber now would be to throw it out of use for his lifetime.