man had merely muttered "By Jove, that's too d---- bad!" and
flung himself out of the room.

His wife did not observe that her mother-in-law was regarding her; she
did not see that her husband had left the room; she thought of no contest
of wits, of no game she had won or lost. She thought only of the tragical
mistake she had made--the dull, blundering crime she had committed; and
still bowed over, and gnawing her nails, she looked sideways with her
hard, round, black eyes, at Hope Wayne.

The heiress sat quietly by the side of her friend Lawrence Newt. She
was holding the hand of Mrs. Simcoe, who glanced sometimes at Lawrence,
calmly, and with no sign of regretful or revengeful remembrance. The
Honorable Budlong Dinks was walking up and down the room, stroking his
chin with his hand, not without a curiously vague indignation with the
late lamented proprietor of Pinewood.

It was a strange spectacle. A room full of living men and women who had
just heard what some of them considered their doom pronounced by a dead
man. They had carried him out of his house, cold, powerless, screwed into
the casket. They had laid him in the ground beneath the village spire,
and yet it was his word that troubled, enraged, disappointed, surprised,
and envenomed them. Beyond their gratitude, reproaches, taunts, or fury,
he lay helpless and dumb--yet the most terrible and inaccessible of
despots.

The conversation was cool and indifferent. The legal gentlemen moved
about with a professional and indifferent air, as if they assisted at
such an occasion as medical students at dissections. It was in the way
of business. As Mr. Quiddy, the confidential counsel of the late
lamented Mr. Burt, looked at Mrs. Alfred Dinks, he remarked to Mr.
Baze, a younger member of the bar, anxious to appear well in the eyes
of Quiddy, that it was a pity the friends of deceased parties permitted
their disappointments to overpower them upon these occasions. Saying
which, Mr. Quiddy waved his forefinger in the air, while Mr. Baze, in
a deferential manner and tone, answered, Certainly, because they could
not help themselves. There was no getting round a will drawn as that
will was--here a slight bow to Mr. Quiddy, who had drawn the will, was
interpolated--and if people didn't like what they got, they had better
grin and bear it. Mr. Quiddy further remarked, with the forefinger still
wandering in the air as if restlessly seeking for some argument to point,
that th