“It may seem so now to us all, to herself most of all, poor girl,” answered Matthew Dalbrook. “But I never saw a sorrow yet that Time could not heal, and the sorrow of a girl of nineteen leaves such a margin for Time’s healing powers. God grant that you and I may both live to see her bright and happy again—with a second husband. There is something prosaic, I feel, in the very sound; but there may be some touch of romance even in a second love.”
He did not see the painful change in his son’s face while he was talking: the sudden crimson which faded slowly to a ghastly pallor. It had never occurred to Matthew Dalbrook that his son Theodore had felt anything more than a cousinly regard for Lord Cheriton’s daughter.
The funeral took place on the following Wednesday—one of those funerals about which people talk for a month, and in which grief is almost lost sight of by the majority of the mourners in a feverish excitement. The procession of carriages, very few of them unoccupied, was nearly half a mile long—the little churchyard at Milbrook could scarcely contain the mourners. The sisters’ husbands were there, with hats hidden in crape, and solemn countenances; honestly sorry for their brother-in-law’s death, but not uninterested in his will. All the district, within a radius of thirty miles, had been on the alert to pay this last mark of respect to a young man who had been universally liked, and whose melancholy fate had moved every heart.
The will was read in the library, and Juanita appeared for the first time since her cousins had been at Cheriton. She came into the room with her mother, and went to Matthew and his son quietly, and gave a hand to each, and answered their grave inquiries about her health without one tear or one faltering accent; and then she took her seat beside her father’s chair, and waited for the reading of the will. It seemed to her as if it contained her husband’s last words, addressed to her from his grave. He knew when he wrote or dictated those words that she would not hear them in his lifetime. The will left her a life-interest in everything, except twenty thousand pounds in consols to Lady Jane, a few legacies to old servants and local charities, and a few souvenirs to college friends. Sir Godfrey had held the estate in fee simple, and could deal with it as he pleased. He expressed a hope that if his wife survived him she should continue to live at the Priory, and that the household should remain, as far as possible, unchanged, that no old horse should ever be sold, and no dogs disposed of in any way off the premises. This last request was to secure a continuance of old customs. His father had never allowed a horse that he had kept over a twelvemonth to be sold; and had never parted with a dog. His own hand shot the horse that was no longer fit for service; his own hand poisoned the dog whose life had ceased to be a blessing.
When the will was finished, and it was by no means a lengthy document, Lady Jane kissed her daughter-in-law.
“You will do as he wished, won’t you, dearest?” she said, softly.
“Live at the Priory—yes, Lady Jane, unless you will live there instead. It would be more natural for you to be mistress there. When—when—my darling made that will he must have thought of me as an old woman, likely to survive him by a few years at most, and it would seem natural to him for me to go on living in his house—to continue to live—those were his words, you know—to continue to live in the home of my married life. But all is different now, and it would be better for you to have the Priory. It has been your home so long. It is full of associations and interests for you. I can live anywhere—anywhere except in this detested house.”
She had spoken in a low voice all the time, so low as to be quite inaudible to her father and Matthew Dalbrook, who were talking confidentially upon the other side of the wide oak table.
“My love, it is your house. It will be full of associations for you too—the memories of his youth. It may comfort you by-and-by to live among the things he cared for. And I can be with you there now and then. You will bear with a melancholy old woman now and then,” pleaded Lady Jane, with tearful tenderness.