Mary Anne strained her eyes, blinded by their tears, upon the short line, as its features came into view one by one, more distinctly than could have happened at any time but this of snow. All she had cared for in life was being carried past there; henceforth the world would be a miserable blank. Dead! Killed! Murdered!--murdered by her brother, Richard Thornycroft! Had it been done by anybody not connected with her by blood, some satisfaction might have been derived by bringing the crime home to its perpetrator. Had it been brought home to Richard--and of course she could not move to bring it--he would have battled it out, persisting he was justified. He called it justifiable homicide; she called it murder. The distant line of black has passed now, and colours follow: men and women, boys and girls; displaying, if not all the tints of the rainbow, the shades and hues, dirt included, that prevail in the every-day attire of the great unwashed. Mary Anne glided into her room, and sank down on her knees in the darkest corner. Some time after, when she thought they might be coming home, for the mourners would return to the Red Court, not the Mermaid, she came out again, her eyes swollen, and entered her step-mother's room. My lady, looking worse and worse, every day bringing her _palpably_ nearer the grave, sat with her prayer-book in her hand She had been reading the burial service. Ah, how changed she was; how changed in spirit! "I suppose it is over," she said, in a subdued tone, as she laid the book down. "Yes; by this time." "May God rest his soul!" she breathed, to herself rather than to her companion. Mary Anne covered her face with her hand, and for some moments there was perfect silence. "I shall be going hence to-morrow, as you know," resumed Lady Ellis, "never to return, never perhaps to hold further communication with the Red Court Farm. I would ask you one thing first, Mary Anne, or the doubt and trouble will follow me: perhaps mix itself up with my thoughts in dying. What of Cyril?" "Of Cyril?" returned Miss Thornycroft, lifting her face, rather in surprise. "We have not heard from him." "Of course I know that. What I wish to ask is--what are the apprehensions?" "There are none. Papa and my brothers seem perfectly at their ease in regard to him." "Then whence arises this great weight of care, of tribulation, that lies on you?--that I can see lies on you, Mary Anne?" "It is not on Cyril's account. The events of the last few days have frightened me," she hastened to add. "They have startled others as well as me." "Ah, yes; true. And it seems to me so sad that you did not know the man who fired the pistol," continued Lady Ellis, who had no suspicion that Miss Thornycroft had not told the whole truth. "But to return to Cyril. If it be as you say, that they are easy about him, why, they must know something that I and others do not. I have asked your papa, but he only puts me off. Mary Anne, you might tell _me_."