'I did not know,' she answered coldly; 'but I am not surprised to hear that he has been generous to you.' 'No, he is your paragon--your preux chevalier--is he not?' sneered Brian. 'Bessie told me as much.' 'She told you only the truth. No one who lives at Kingthorpe can help knowing that your cousin is a good man.' She went on with the letter. 'Now you are married the claims upon you will be larger than they have been, and I know you will not care to be a pensioner upon your father-in-law's bounty. I have, therefore, arranged with my bankers that you should draw on me quarterly for a hundred and fifty pounds while I am away. This will help you to keep the wolf from the door while you are reading for the Bar. I hope to find you a successful junior, in the first stage of a prosperous journey to the Bench, when I come back.' 'Six hundred a year. Not half bad, is it, Ida?' 'It is very good of him. I hope you will do as he suggests.' 'How do you mean?' 'Work hard at your profession.' 'I shall work hard enough,' answered Brian, turning sullen, 'unless you all badger me. I hate being badgered.' CHAPTER XXIII. 'ALL OUR LIFE IS MIXED WITH DEATH.' Four years and more had gone, and there were changes at Wimperfield--changes at Kingthorpe. Death had come to the Georgian mansion among the wood-crowned hills. The easy-going master of that good old house had taken life a little too easily, had disregarded the warnings of wife and doctor, had dined and slept, and drunk his favourite wines--not immoderately, but with utter disregard of medical regimen--had neither walked, nor ridden, but had let life slip by him in a placid, plethoric self-indulgence--shunning all exertion, all pleasure even, if it were allied with activity of any kind. So, in an existence almost as sleepy as the spell-bound slumber in Beauty's enchanted palace, Ida's father had left the door of his mansion ajar to the fell visitor Death, and the fatal day had come suddenly, with no more warning than Sir Reginald heard Sunday after Sunday in church, or read any evening in his favourite Horace, as he turned the carmine-bordered leaves of one of Firmin Didot's exquisite duodecimos, and mused pleasantly over the poet's perpetual variations upon the old theme-- 'Brother, we must all die.' The guest came like a thief in the night, and snatched his prey, in the midst of the family circle, in the leisurely lamplit hour after dinner, with the sound of gay voices and light laughter in the air. The senseless body breathed and throbbed for another day and another light: and then all was over--and Ida and her stepmother knelt side by side, clasped in each other's arms, by the clay which both had fondly loved.