None the less, he did not underestimate the awkwardness, the danger
even, of her having paid that visit and had that quarrel at such an
unfortunate hour.

He had matter enough for earnest thought during the funeral. It was a
large funeral, though there were not many funeral guests. Five ladies, an
aunt and four cousins, of Lord Loudwater's own generation, came down from
London. The younger generation was either on its way back from the war,
or too busy with its work to find the time to attend the funeral of a
distant relation, whom, if they had chanced to meet him, they neither
liked nor respected. But there was a show of carriages from all the big
houses within a radius of nine miles, which more than made up for the
fewness of the guests. Also, there was a crowd of middle- and lower-class
spectators who considered the funeral of a murdered nobleman a spectacle
indeed worth attending. It was composed of women, children, old men, and
a few wounded private soldiers.

Olivia attended the funeral, wearing a composed but rather pathetic air,
owing to the fact that her brow was most of the time knitted in a
pondering, troubled frown. Lady Croxley, Lord Loudwater's aged aunt, rode
with her in the first coach. She was a loquacious soul, and whiled away
the journey to and from the church, which is over a mile from the Castle,
with a panegyric on her dead nephew, and an astonished dissertation on
the strange fact that Olivia had not had a woman with her during this sad
time. She ascribed her abstinence from this stimulant to her desire to be
alone with her grief. Olivia encouraged her harmless babble by a vague
murmur at the right points, and continued to look pathetic. It was all
her aunt by marriage needed, and it left Olivia free to think her own
thoughts. She gave but few of them to her dead husband; the living
claimed her attention.

Mr. Manley wore an air of gloom far deeper than his sense of the fitness
of things would in the ordinary course of events have demanded. It was
the result of the nervously picturesque English which had flowed with
such ease from the forceful pens of Mr. Douglas and Mr. Gregg. Mr.
Carrington, who rode with him, and from attending the funerals of many
clients had acquired as good a funeral air as any man in his profession,
found his gloom exaggerated. He was all the more scandalized, therefore,
when, as they were nearing the Castle, Mr. Manley suddenly cried, "By
Jove!" and rubbed his hands toge