Margaret Waynflete was still lying in the octagon-room where her end had come upon her. The place had all been made scrupulously tidy, and the little bedstead was standing in the middle of the polished floor. There was no attempt at softening the chill, bare fact of death, by flowers or lights. "Aunt Waynflete wouldn't have liked it," Mrs Palmer said, in answer to Jeanie's faint suggestion; nor was there any emblem of hope and faith. The white, cold daylight came in through the half-closed shutters, and fell upon the grand and awful outlines of the tall old woman whose vigour in life emphasised the contrasting stillness of death. The long, strong hands that had worked so hard, the strong will that had known no paralysing doubts, were idle and inoperative now. Godfrey had never seen death before, and he saw it with a grim and unsoftened aspect; but he was so set on his own purpose that his natural grief and awe were in abeyance. He stood by the prostrate figure looking down at it, while the picture over his head looked at them both. Then he knelt down, and laid his hand on that of the dead woman, starting a little at the unaccustomed chillness of the touch, and before her face, and in the sight of God, he vowed that he would never profit by the results of his wicked action, never enjoy the fortune from which he had ousted Guy, never be master of Waynflete. "As _she_ had one purpose, so will I. I'll free myself from this property that ought not to be mine, and till I have, I'll seek no good for myself, and I'll have no other object. Even Constancy shall not come before it. So help me, God!" Then Godfrey got up from his knees, and felt the sting of shame and self-reproach a little blunted, so that his natural reticence and pride began to revive, and he felt that he would behave properly and not make the family affairs a spectacle for surprised and disapproving Palmers. He did not again go near Guy, who was, indeed, quite unfit to talk to him, and who puzzled Cuthbert more than ever, as, even while the perilous faintness was hardly kept at bay, he whispered, with a sort of triumph-- "Remember; if I _die_, I'm not beaten." "I shall remember," said Cuthbert, quietly. He could not himself resist the discomfort of the creaks and the whispers, the cracks and the murmuring which were always the talk of visitors to Waynflete; he noticed the low, incessant sound of the horseman coming nearer and never coming close. He turned his head to the window as the dusk was closing in, and Guy said, coolly-- "That's the horseman, I suppose, I never heard it before. Miss Vyner says it is certainly the effect of wind in the narrow valley." "I suppose all old houses have odd noises," was Cuthbert's original remark. "Yes; there's nothing in these. I say, where are those two wills?" "I have them safe till the solicitor comes." "Read the last one over. I must know about the mill. Excite me? No. I'm getting better."