e were no explanations on either side; he
behaved with a kind of distant courtesy to the others, answered their
questions, volunteered a word or two sometimes; made himself useful in
small ways as regarded giving orders to the servants, inspecting the
funeral standard and scutcheons, and making one or two arrangements
which fell to him naturally; and went out by himself on horseback or on
foot during the afternoon. His contempt seemed to have fallen from him;
he was as courteous to Chris as to the others; but no word was spoken on
either side as regarded either the past and the great gulf that
separated him from the others, or the future relations between him and
his home.

The funeral took place three days after death, on the Saturday morning;
a requiem was sung in the presence of the body in the parish church; and
Beatrice sat with the mourners in the Torridon chapel behind the black
hearse set with lights, before the open vault in the centre of the
pavement. Ralph sat two places beyond her, with Sir James between; and
she was again vividly conscious of his presence, of his movements as he
knelt and sat; and again she wondered what all the solemn ceremonies
meant to him, the yellow candles, the black vestments, the mysterious
hallowing of the body with incense and water--counteracting, as it were,
with fragrance and brightness, the corruption and darkness of the grave.

She walked back with Margaret, who clung to her now, almost desperately,
finding in her sane serenity an antidote to her own remorse; and as she
walked through the garden and across the moat, with Nicholas and Mary
coming behind, she watched the three men going in front, Sir James in
the middle, the monk on his left, and the slow-stepping Ralph on his
right, and marvelled at the grim acting.

There they went, the father and his two sons, side by side in courteous
silence--she noticed Ralph step forward to lift the latch of the
garden-gate for the others to pass through--and between them lay an
impassable gulf; she found herself wondering whether the other gulf that
they had looked into half an hour before were so deep or wide.

She was out again with Sir James alone in the evening before supper, and
learnt from him then that Ralph was to stay till Monday.

"He has not spoken to me of returning again," said the old man, "Of
course it is impossible. Do you not think so, Mistress Atherton."

"It is impossible," she said. "What good would be served?"