"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and--be broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to powder. "How will it be with them?" she asked. "Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out the will?" Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened with his whole face, but he had kept silence until now. Amy had looked up also; startled by the news, and waiting to hear more. The young people were both too really interested, from their intimate knowledge of the first misfortune, to reply with any common "Is it possible?" to this. "The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent 'might have been,'" said Mr. Sherrett. "There may be something secured; there ought to be. Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe. Otherwise, as such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than nothing." "What will they do?" The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again. "Can't somebody help them? There is so much money in the world." "Yes, Effie. And there is gold in the mines. And there are plenty of kind affections in the world, too; but there's loneliness and broken heartedness, for all that. The difficulty always is to bring things together." "I suppose that is just what _people_ were made for." "It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves. The hardest kind of cases." "It's an awful spill-out, this time," Rodney said to Amy, as she followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner was over. "And no mistake!" Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match, and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in a way they were not often used to. "Will they have to go away?" asked Amy. "Out of that house? Of course. They'll be just tipped out of everything." "How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!" "She won't stand round lamenting. I've seen her tipped out before. Amy, I'll tell you what; you ought to stick by. Maybe she won't want you, at first; but you ought to do it. Father,"--as Mr. Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining chair,--"you'll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?" "Why, yes, if I could be of any service. But one wouldn't like to intrude. There are executors to the will. I don't know that it is quite my place." "I don't believe there will be much intruding--of _your_ sort. And the executors have got nothing to do now. Who are they?"