With which reflections, the good Father dressed for dinner.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE GRAND CRASH.
The funeral was over. Charles had waited with poor weeping Mary to see the coffin carried away under the dark grim archway of the vault, and had tried to comfort her who would not be comforted. And, when the last wild wail of the organ had died away, and all the dark figures but they two had withdrawn from the chapel, there stood those two poor orphans alone together.
It was all over, and they began for the first time to realise it; they began to feel what they lost. King Densil was dead, and King Cuthbert reigned. When a prime minister dies, the world is shaken; when a county member dies, the county is agitated, and the opposition electors, till lately insignificant, rise suddenly into importance, and the possible new members are suddenly great men. So, when a mere country gentleman dies, the head of a great family dies, relations are changed entirely between some score or two of persons. The dog of to-day is not the dog of yesterday. Servants are agitated, and remember themselves of old impertinences, and tremble. Farmers wonder what the new Squire's first move will be. Perhaps even the old hound wonders whether he is to keep his old place by the fire or no; and younger brothers bite their nails, and wonder, too, about many things.
Charles wondered profoundly in his own room that afternoon, whither he had retired after having dismissed Mary at her door with a kiss. In spite of his grief, he wondered what was coming, and tried to persuade himself that he didn't care. From this state of mind he was aroused by William, who told him that Lord Segur was going, and Lord Saltire with him, and that the latter wanted to speak to him.
Lord Saltire had his foot on the step of the carriage. "Charles, my dear boy," he said, "the moment things are settled come to me at Segur Castle. Lord Segur wants you to come and stay there while I am there."
Lord Segur, from the carriage, hoped Charles would come and see them at once.