Then, responding to her mother's grievously shocked demeanour, she relented into explanation.
"I think I never admired Father so much in his life as I did at his death. He closed his eyes, restfully and unfearingly, upon the consciousness of work well done and principles truly upheld. What business is it of ours if they were mistaken principles? So many people, who profess to cling to the creeds supported by the Churches, live as if they had none, and then drift out on a tide of terrified remorse and shame. But, personally, I would not feel fit to intercede for Father's 'forgiveness,' if he really requires to be forgiven for being true to his lights."
Ferlie's mother was too religious to see it, and, since it seems to follow that the brighter the hope of Eternal Life, the blacker the garb in which it must be approached, there was much melodious moaning at the bar when her husband's ashes were interred upon the shores of that Eternal Sea which brought us hither and upon which, in imagination, she had safely launched his sceptical soul.
A week later she was still sewing bands of crepe on to Peter's various coats and seeking consolation in those little details of mournful respect she was able to accord her Dead.
* * * * * *
In due course, Aunt Brillianna, returning from the uttermost ends of Italy, was overwhelmed by the volume of water which had poured under the Family Bridge during her inexcusable retirement.
As the younger relatives, who had expectations at her hands, remarked: "Anything might have happened to her at her time of life." Why, Death had happened to her nephew!
To Ferlie at the Black Towers she went: that historical country residence of long-ago Greville-Mainwarings.
The place bored Clifford, Ferlie informed her, and just now he was obliged to be in town.
Clifford let her do what she liked at Black Towers, so long as she did not offend old Jardine, the retainer who acted as head seneschal and cherished insurmountable objections to innovation of any kind.