Upstairs, the room in which my father's body lay had been prepared for the ceremony. All the furniture--bed, chairs, everything--had been taken out: there was nothing at all in the room but the coffin on trestles: the wainscotted walls had been hung with black velvet, which looked indeed funereal as it absorbed the light of fifty or sixty wax tapers and reflected none. The tapers stood in silver sconces on the walls: they showed up the coffin, the lid of which, not yet screwed down, was laid so as to expose the white face of the deceased, grave, set, serious and full of dignity. I remembered how it looked, fiery and passionate, when my father drove me from his presence. The candles also lit up the faces of the mourners: in the midst of so much blackness their faces were white and deathlike. On the breast of the dead man lay branches of rosemary: on the lid of the coffin were branches of rosemary, of which every person present carried a sprig. On the lid of the coffin was also a large and capacious silver cup with two handles. Only one thing relieved the blackness of the walls. It was a hatchment with the family shield. Everyone would believe, so splendid is this coat of arms, that our family must rank among the noblest in the land. But the time has passed when the City Fathers were closely connected by blood with the gentry and the aristocracy of the country: of our family one could only point to the shield: where we came from, I know not: nor how we obtained so fine a shield: nor to what station of life my ancestors originally belonged. Family pride, however, is a harmless superstition: not one of us, I am sure, would surrender that coat of arms, or acknowledge that we were anything but a very ancient and honourable House. When I entered the house, accompanied by Alice, I found the hall and the steps, and even the street itself, which is but narrow, crowded with the humbler class of mourners. There was a whisper of surprise, and more than one honest hand furtively grasped mine. Well: there would be few such hands to welcome Matthew. I did not need to be told where the coffin lay. I led my wife up the stairs and so into my father's room, which was the best bedroom, on the first floor. I found the various members of the family already assembled, my Uncle Paul as I expected, with Matthew, usurping my place at the head of the coffin. My cousins, of whom there were five-and-twenty at least, including my Uncle Paul's wife and two daughters, showed signs of profound astonishment at the sight of the banished son. The Alderman, for his part, held up his hands in amazement, and looked up to Heaven as if to protest against this assertion of filial rights. The girls, who were as amiable as their brother Matthew, stared with more rudeness than one would expect even from a Wappineer, at Alice. They knew not, perhaps, that I had taken a wife: to a natural curiosity on such a subject they affected a contempt which they took no pains to disguise.