"Not at all. We've no right there--not the right of the most distant cousin twenty times removed. Mother was his mistress, and she daren't use the word 'husband' even to us, though I've seen her mouth itching to do it. 'Tis always 'your dear father.' She can't put on a widow's streamers, though it's in her heart to. She'll have to balance her black pretty cautious, I can tell you, if she don't want the people to be staring." "Surely it must all come out if he leaves his money to us." "He'll do it clever," said Cora bitterly. "With all his faults he was clever enough. He didn't hide this--so clever as a lapwing hides her nest--for near thirty years, to let it come out the minute he was dead." "If I was engaged to be married, like what you are, I shouldn't be so nervous," said Phyllis. "As to that, 'twas as well for me that it fell out now and not later. It may mean a bigger establishment after all; and even a bigger wedding, if I put it off till spring." "My word, what'll Ned say?" But Ned's view did not enter as a serious factor into Cora's. "He's all right," she answered. "If I'm content, so's he." Storm heralded the funeral day, and dawn blinked red-eyed from much weeping. It was hoped that further torrents might hold off until after the ceremony, and happily they did so, though intermittent rain fell and the wind stormed roughly out of a sad-coloured south. "'Blessed be the carpse that the rain rains on,'" said Joe Voysey in muffled accents to Jack Head. They were walking under the coffin, and bore it, with the assistance of six other men, to the grave. "Ban't so blessed for them that's alive, however," answered Jack. "The mourners will be lashed out of their skins by the look of it. Death's never so busy as at a funeral." A purple pall spread over the coffin, and while humble men carried the weight of Nathan Baskerville's dust, others of greater repute stood at the corners of the coverlet. They included Mr. Luscombe of Trowlesworthy, Timothy Waite of Coldstone Farm, Heathman Lintern as representing Undershaugh, one Mr. Popham from Cornwood, Nathan's lawyer, and others. Humphrey Baskerville walked beside the coffin as chief mourner, and Hester Baskerville, on her son Ned's arm, followed him with the rest of the family, save Nathan's namesake, who was at sea. Other relations came after them, with Nicholas Bassett, Polly's husband, and Milly, the wife of Rupert. Cora and her mother and her sister were next in the long procession, and half a dozen private carriages stood together beneath the churchyard wall to support a convention and indicate the respect that their owners entertained towards the dead.