That was the dominant feeling in this weak soul. He could not be gone for ever. Yet the truth came back upon her in hideous distinctness every now and then--came back suddenly and awfully, like the swift revelation of a desolate plague-stricken scene under a lightning flash. He was gone. He was lying in his coffin, in the dear old Tudor hall where they had sat so cosily. Those dismal reiterated strokes of the funeral-bell meant that his burial was at hand. They were moving the coffin already, perhaps. His place knew him no more. She tottered to the darkened window, lifted the edge of the blind, and looked out. The funeral train was moving slowly along the carriage sweep, through the winding shrubberied road. How long, and black, and solemnly splendid the procession looked. Everybody had loved and respected him. It was a grand funeral. The thought of this general homage gave a faint thrill of comfort to the widow's heart. "My noble husband," she ejaculated. "Who could help loving you?" It seemed to her only a little while ago that she had driven up to the Tudor porch for the first time after her happy honeymoon, when she was in the bloom of youth and beauty, and life was like a schoolgirl's happy dream. "How short life is," she sobbed; "how cruelly short for those who are happy!" With Violet grief was no less passionate; but it did not find its sole vent in tears. The stronger soul was in rebellion against Providence. She kept aloof from her mother in the time of sorrow. What could they say to each other? They could only cry together. Violet shut herself in her room, and refused to see anyone, except patient Miss McCroke, who was always bringing her cups of tea, or basins of arrowroot, trying to coax her to take some kind of nourishment, dabbing her hot forehead with eau-de-Cologne--doing all those fussy little kindnesses which are so acutely aggravating in a great sorrow. "Let me lie on the ground alone, and think of him, and wail for him." That is what Violet Tempest would have said, if she could have expressed her desire clearly. Roderick Vawdrey went back to the Abbey House after the funeral, and contrived to see Miss McCroke, who was full of sympathy for everybody. "Do let me see Violet, that's a dear creature," he said. "I can't tell you how unhappy I am about her. I can't get her face out of my thoughts, as I saw it that dreadful night when I led her horse home--the wild sad eyes, the white lips." "She is not fit to see anyone," said Miss McCroke; "but perhaps it might rouse her a little to see you." Miss McCroke had an idea that all mourners ought to be roused; that much indulgence in grief for the dead was reprehensible. "Yes," answered Rorie eagerly, "she would see me, I know. We are like brother and sister." "Come into the schoolroom," said the governess, "and I'll see what I can do." The schoolroom was Vixen's own particular den, and was not a bit like the popular idea of a schoolroom.