"Look at it, Cleve," he said, half an hour later. "I thought all these things might have softened him--his own illness and his mother's death; and the Etherages--by Jove, I think he'll ruin them; the poor old man is going to leave Hazelden in two or three weeks, and--and he's _utterly_ ruined I think, and all by that d--d lawsuit, that Larkin knows perfectly well Lord Verney can never succeed in; but in the meantime it will be the ruin of that nice family, that were so happy there; and look--here it is--my own letter returned--so insulting--like a beggar's petition; and this note--not even signed by him." "Lord Verney is indisposed; he has already expressed his fixed opinion upon the subject referred to in Mr. Sedley's statement, which he returns; he declines discussing it, and refers Mr. Sedley again to his solicitor." So, disconsolate Sedley, having opened his griefs to Cleve, went on to Hazelden, where he was only too sure to meet with a thoroughly sympathetic audience. A week passed, and more. And now came the day of old Lady Verney's funeral. It was a long procession--tenants on horseback, tenants on foot--the carriages of all the gentlemen round about. On its way to Penruthyn Priory the procession passed by the road, ascending the steep by the little church of Llanderris, and full in view, through a vista in the trees, of the upper windows of the steward's house. Our friend Mr. Dingwell, whose journey had cost him a cold, got his clothes on for this occasion, and was in the window, with a field-glass, which had amused him on the road from London. He had called up Mrs. Mervyn's servant girl to help him to the names of such people as she might recognise. As the hearse, with its grove of sable plumes, passed up the steep road, he was grave for a few minutes; and he said-- "That was a good woman. Well for _you_, ma'am, if you have ever one-twentieth part of her virtues. She did not know how to make her virtues pleasant, though; she liked to have people afraid of her; and if you have people afraid of you, my dear, the odds are they'll hate you. We can't have everything--virtue and softness, fear and love--in this queer world. An excellent--severe--most ladylike woman. What are they stopping for now? Oh! There they go again. The only ungenteel thing she ever did is what she has begun to do now--to rot; but she'll do it _alone_, in the _dark_, you see; and there _is_ a right and a wrong, and she did some good in her day." The end of his queer homily he spoke in a tone a little gloomy, and he followed the hearse awhile with his glass. In two or three minutes more the girl thought she heard him sob; and looking up, with a shock, perceived that his face was gleaming with a sinister laugh.