The Devil

Then the remains were consigned to the family vault in the small graveyard behind the church--the crowd filling every vista, the bells tolling, and the soldiers discharging a cannon and making one jump at each regularly timed discharge. Mavis, turning her eyes in all directions, looked at everything with intense interest--at the gentlefolk, now inextricably mixed up with the tenantry and the mob; at her husband, standing so black and solemn, with a face that might have belonged to a marble statue; at the puff of smoke that crept upward when the gun went bang, at the sunlight on the church tower, at the birds flying so high and so joyous above its battlements. And all at once she saw Aunt Petherick--the blackest mourner there, with crape veils trailing to the ground, a red face down which the tears streamed in rivers; sobbing so that the sobs sounded like the most violent hiccoughs; really almost as much noise as the soldiers' gun.

Will had seen her too. Mavis noticed his stony glance at Auntie, when the crowd began to move again.

While he was slowly making his way toward the stables, she got hold of Mrs. Petherick and had a little chat with her. Auntie had now entirely recovered from her recent hysterical storm; the redness of her face was passing off, and its expression was one of anxiety, rather than of grief.

"My dear girl," she said, "I don't yet know what this will mean to me. You know, he promised the house for my life--but he wouldn't give me a lease. I've nothing to show--not so much as a letter. I may be turned out neck and crop."

"Oh, Auntie, I should think his wishes would be respected."

"How'm I to prove his wishes?" said Mrs. Petherick, quite testily. "It'll be wish my foot, for all the lawyers'll care."

"Oh, Auntie!"

"You know, he faithfully promised to provide for me. And now the talk is he never made a will at all. You can't believe the talk. But, oh, it's awful to me. The suspense! It'll break my heart to give up North Ride."

"Auntie," said Mavis presently; "if you chance upon Will, don't speak to him."

"Why not?"

She whispered the answer. "He found out about him and me."

"Oh, did he? How did he take it?"

"Awfully badly."

But Mrs. Petherick did not seem to care twopence about the domestic trouble of Mavis and Will. Her thoughts were engrossed by her own affairs.