"Far from it," replied Chandos, calmly. "I came to pay the last duty to my parent; to insult no one. It is but for a few hours that we shall be together, Sir William: let us for that time forget everything but that we are the sons of the same father and mother; and by the side of this coffin lay aside, at least for the time, all feelings of animosity."
"Very well for you to talk of forgetting," answered Sir William Winslow, bitterly. "I do not forget so easily, Sir. The sons of the same father and mother!--Well, it is so, and strange, too."
"Hush! hush!" cried Chandos, waving his hand with an indignant look; and, not knowing what would be uttered next, he turned quickly away, and left the room.
"Oh, he runs," said Sir William Winslow, whose face was flushed, and his brow knit. "But he shall hear more of my mind before he goes. He said before them all that he would never consent to be dependent on one who was a tyrant in everything--to my servants--even to my dogs. Was that not an insult?--I will make him eat those words as soon as the funeral is over, or he shall learn that I can and will exercise the power my father left me to the uttermost. It was the wisest thing he ever did to enable me to tame this proud spirit. Oh, I will bring it down!--Sons of the same father and mother! On my life, if it were not for the likeness, I should think he was a changeling. But he is like--very like; and like my mother, too. It is from her that he takes that obstinate spirit which he thinks so fine, and calls resolution."
As he thus thought, his eyes fell upon the coffin; and he felt a little ashamed. There is a still, calm power in the presence of the dead which rebukes wrath; and Sir William Winslow looked down upon the pall, and thought of what was beneath with feelings that he did not like to indulge, but could not altogether conquer. He was spared a struggle with them, however; for a minute had hardly passed after Chandos had left him, when a servant came in, and advanced to whisper a word in his master's ear.
"Well, I am ready," replied Sir William, "quite ready. Where are all the carriages? I do not see them."
"They have been taken into the back court," said the man.
"Well, then, I am quite ready," repeated the baronet, and retired, but not by the door which led to the room where the guests were assembled.
Half an hour passed in the gloomy preparations for the funeral march. The callous assistants of the undertaker went about their task with the usual studied gravity of aspect, and, at heart, the cold indifference of habit to all the fearful realities which lay hid under the pageantry which their own hands had prepared out of plumes and tinsel, and velvet and silk. Then came the display of hearse and mutes and plume-bearers, and the long line of carriages following with the mourners, who were only in the mercenary point better than the hired mourners of more ancient days. And the people of the village came out to stare at the fine sight; and amongst the young, some vague indefinite notion of there being something solemn and awful under all that decoration might prevail; but with the great multitude it was but a stage-procession.
None thought of what it is to lay the flesh of man amongst the worms, when the spirit has winged its flight away where no man knoweth.