Then Henrietta Prendergast went away; and presently he heard a slight sound in that awful room overhead, and he knew she had taken her place beside the dead. He felt, as he sat for hours of that day quite alone, like a banished man. His wife was doubly dead to him now. All his married life had grown on a sudden unreal; and when he thought of the still white face which he was to see once, and only once more, for ever, it was with a strange sense of dread and avoidance, and not with the tender sorrow which, even amid the shock and self-reproach of yesterday, had come to his relief. Somehow, he could not have told how, with the inevitable interruptions, the wretched necessary business of such a time, the hours of that day passed over Chudleigh Wilmot's head, and the night came. He had looked his last upon his wife, had taken his solemn leave of the death-chamber. She lay now in her coffin, sealed, hidden from sight for evermore, and there was nothing now but the long dreary waiting. In its turn that too passed, and in due time the funeral day; and Chudleigh Wilmot was quite alone in his silent house, and had only to look back into the past. Forward into the future he did not dare, he had not heart to look. A kind of blank, the reaction from intense excitement, had set in with him, and for the first time in his life his physical strength flagged. The claims of his business began to press upon him; people sent for him, respectfully and hesitatingly, but with some confidence that he would come, nevertheless. And Wilmot went; and was received with condoling looks, which he affected not to see, and compassionating tones, of which he took no notice. He had no more to do with the past--he had buried it; his sole desire was that others should aid him in this apparent oblivion; how far from real it was, he alone could have told. He had written to Kilsyth a few indispensable lines, and had had a formal report of Madeleine's health, which he had conscientiously tried to range with other professional documents, and lay by with them. It was certainly a dark and dreary time, endless in length, and so hopeless, so final, that it seemed to have no outlet; a time than which Chudleigh Wilmot believed life could never bring him a darker. But trouble was new to him. He learned more about it later on in his day.