that he uttered a faint cry and quickened his steps.... Benevolent
stepfather!

These distresses begot a hope. Perhaps, after all, probably, there would
be some settlement.... She might not be rich, not so very rich.... She
might be tied up....

He perceived in that lay his hope of salvation. Otherwise--oh, pitiful
soul!--things were possible in him; he saw only too clearly what
dreadful things were possible.

If only she were disinherited, if only he might take her, stripped of
all these possessions that even in such glancing anticipations
begot----this horrid indigestion of the imagination!

But then,----the Hostels?...

There he stumbled against an invincible riddle!

There was something dreadful about the way in which these considerations
blotted out the essential fact of separations abolished, barriers
lowered, the way to an honourable love made plain and open....

The day of the funeral came at last, and Mr. Brumley tried not to think
of it, paternally, at Margate. He fled from Sir Isaac's ultimate
withdrawal. Blenker's obituary notice in the _Old Country Gazette_ was a
masterpiece of tactful eulogy, ostentatiously loyal, yet extremely not
unmindful of the widowed proprietor, and of all the possible changes of
ownership looming ahead. Mr. Brumley, reading it in the Londonward
train, was greatly reminded of the Hostels. That was a riddle he didn't
begin to solve. Of course, it was imperative the Hostels should
continue--imperative. Now they might run them together, openly, side by
side. But then, with such temptations to hitherto inconceivable
vulgarities. And again, insidiously, those visions returned of two
figures, manifestly opulent, grouped about a big motor car or standing
together under a large subservient archway....

There was a long letter from her at his flat, a long and amazing letter.
It was so folded that his eye first caught the writing on the third
page: "_never marry again. It is so clear that our work needs all my
time and all my means._" His eyebrows rose, his expression became
consternation; his hands trembled a little as he turned the letter over
to read it through. It was a deliberate letter. It began--

"_Dear Mr. Brumley, I could never have imagined how much there is to do
after we are dead, and before we can be buried._"

"Yes," said Mr. Brumley; "but what does this _mean_?"

"_There are so many surprises_----"

"It isn't clear."

"_In ourselves and the things about us._"