"Always here, darling." ...

"Do something for the Miss Calthorps—you know—where I was at school. Some one told me they were in poor circumstances. They must be quite old now."

"They shall be seen to."

The ship passed through the Straits of Messina. Etna behind them on the south-west, with its coronet of snow. Far away to the north-west was the chain of the Lipari Islands, blue pyramids with spectacular columns of yellow-purple smoke issuing from their craters against the approaching sunset. The Tyrrhenian Sea was incarnadine under the level rays of the sinking sun. To the east rose the green and furrowed heights of Aspromonte, green-gold and violet in the light of the sunset, dotted, especially along the sea-base, with pink-white houses and churches with their campanili-like pink fingers pointing upwards. Lucy's eyes gazed their last on this splendid spectacle of earthly beauty. Roger, still holding her hand, lay half across her bed, more haggard than she, unshaven, hollow-cheeked, emaciated with futile blood-letting, worn out with want of sleep and no appetite for eating, and the long vigil over his dying wife. He slept now, soundly. Her eyes gazed at his closed eyelids for one moment; then motion and life passed from them.

* * * * *

It was always Maud's function in this sad world to attend to the plain matters of business whilst others gave way to a grief that knew no solace, or a joy that spurned formalities. So it was she who left the ship at Naples, called on Roger's old friend, Ted Parsons, the Consul-General, sent telegrams in all the necessary directions, and fulfilled all necessary forms and ceremonies. Whether it was an unusual concession or not, it was at once agreed that the body of Mrs. Brentham, enclosed in a "shell"—they obtained what was necessary from Naples—should be carried on with her grief-distraught husband and her husband's sister to Southampton. There all three of them were landed, and thence they proceeded in a very humdrum way by South-Western and Great-Western railways to Reading, where the two live ones put up at an hotel so commonplace and out of date that it momentarily wiped up sentiment and froze the tears in their tear-glands; while poor Lucy's remains were temporarily lodged in a kind of Chapelle ardente used by the chief undertaker, who did things in style. No sign of life from Sibyl. Evidently there was no one at home at Engledene. Lucy's parents and Lucy's children were communicated with, and in due course the funeral took place at Aldermaston. Roger even sent word of it—remembering Lucy's message—to Mrs. Baines at Theale; and to the intense surprise of every one in the neighbourhood Mrs. Baines stalked into the church and churchyard, attended the burial, and then strode away to the station, and so back to Theale, refusing hospitality at Church Farm by a simple shake of the gaunt grey head, down the cheeks of which, however, a tear or two had trickled.

Lucy came to rest at last in the churchyard of Aldermaston, under the boughs of one of those superb blue cedars of the Park which lean out over the walls of mellow brick. She had so admired these cedars in her dawning sense of beauty when she taught in the neighbouring school; and when she was wont to pace up and down the Mortimer Road considering whether or not she should go out to Africa to marry John Baines.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE END OF SIBYL

For three weeks after Lucy's burial, Roger scarcely knew what he did or whom he saw. His boys and girls went back to school and college; Maud busied herself in reconnoitring for a home, some place not too expensive to keep up, where the children might come in school holidays, where Roger might find rest, isolation, the healing power of country life when he was wearied with towns and travel. She designed to acquire for him and her the old Vicarage at Farleigh Wallop. The Vicar who had succeeded their father, instead of being an archæologist, to whom present-day life was a wearisome fact that must obtrude itself as little as possible on his studies, liked to reside where the population was thickest. Of the two villages, therefore, within his cure of souls he chose Cliddesden for his residence as being the more populous, and let the vicarage at Farleigh whenever he could find a tenant. This of course was the old home of the Brenthams and the place where Maud had lived up to the time of her father's death. She had no inquiries to make as to drainage or water. She knew its charms and its weaknesses; and finding it untenanted she soon concluded an agreement with the Vicar to take it on a reasonable rent and with some security of tenure. To live there once more would be for her and Roger—and for Maurice too, and Geoffrey when he chose to come and see them—a pleasant linking-up of past with present.