The days went by in a dreary dream. Kingston went mechanically about his duties, and saw the figure of Gundred moving at his side like something unreal and strange. There were inevitable activities for him to carry through, and he discharged them steadfastly, with his numbed mind fixed on other matters. As for Gundred, not having so suffered, she found herself more alive to the matters in hand. There were condolences, inquiries to answer, arrangements to be made, restorations to be seen about. Gundred’s interest in the details of life could never lie long dormant, and when the first shock had passed with two or three days of intermittent tears, Gundred dried her eyes carefully, with a due regard to their appearance, and began to pluck up her sense of importance once more, thanking Heaven for her powers of self-control. The fire had confined itself to the old wooden wing and the chapel, and had made no attempt to devour the stark stone walls of the Castle itself. Gundred was deeply grateful for the forbearance thus manifested by Heaven, and was soon immersed in plans for the rebuilding of the ruins. Her husband, stupefied and calm, was not yet able to give her any effectual help, and so on her unaided shoulders she triumphantly supported all the responsibilities of the case. As time passed, and her first outbreak of genuine sorrow was quelled by the flood of her new activities, Gundred even began to enjoy the importance which events had so abruptly conferred upon her. Suddenly she became more conspicuous in the public eye than ever in her life before. The tragedy of Brakelond challenged attention and pity up and down the length and breadth of England. In horror, in picturesqueness, in romance, it possessed all the titillating qualities best fitted to make it the talk of the country. And Gundred became the central figure of the picture; sympathy and admiration were concentrated on her; her courage, her coolness, her grief, her rapid resumption of self-control, were made the daily subject of laudation. Of her husband nobody knew much, or cared. Her own name, her own position, made her the pivot of the drama, to say nothing of all the other causes that had tended to obscure Kingston since the catastrophe--his dazed acquiescence in events, his reluctance to enter the world of new plans in which Gundred was moving so happily. He sank into the background, and was alone with his sorrow.