e
Stephen. He put his arm round her; and she, turning to him, laid her
hand on his breast and sobbed as though her heart would break.

* * * * *

The bodies of the two squires were brought to Normanstand. Rowly had
long ago said that if he died unmarried he would like to lie beside his
half-sister, and that it was fitting that, as Stephen would be the new
Squire of Norwood, her dust should in time lie by his. When the terrible
news of her nephew's and of Norman's death came to Norwood, Miss Laetitia
hurried off to Normanstand as fast as the horses could bring her.

Her coming was an inexpressible comfort to Stephen. After the first
overwhelming burst of grief she had settled into an acute despair. Of
course she had been helped by the fact that Harold had been with her, and
she was grateful for that too. But it did not live in her memory of
gratitude in the same way. Of course Harold was with her in trouble! He
had always been; would always be.

But the comfort which Aunt Laetitia could give was of a more positive
kind.

From that hour Miss Rowly stayed at Normanstand. Stephen wanted her; and
she wanted to be with Stephen.

After the funeral Harold, with an instinctive delicacy of feeling, had
gone to live in his own house; but he came to Normanstand every day.
Stephen had so long been accustomed to consulting him about everything
that there was no perceptible change in their relations. Even necessary
business to be done did not come as a new thing.

And so things went on outwardly at Normanstand very much as they had done
before the coming of the tragedy. But for a long time Stephen had
occasional bursts of grief which to witness was positive anguish to those
who loved her.

Then her duty towards her neighbours became a sort of passion. She did
not spare herself by day or by night. With swift intuition she grasped
the needs of any ill case which came before her, and with swift movement
she took the remedy in hand.

Her aunt saw and approved. Stephen, she felt, was in this way truly
fulfilling her duty as a woman. The old lady began to secretly hope, and
almost to believe, that she had laid aside those theories whose carrying
into action she so dreaded.

But theories do not die so easily. It is from theory that practice takes
its real strength, as well as its direction. And did the older woman
whose life had been bound under more orderly restraint but know, Stephen
was following out her theo