Ida sat in the library on the morning of the funeral. A pelting rain

beat upon the windows, over which the blinds had been drawn; the great

silence which reigned in the chamber above, in which the dead master of

Heron lay, brooded over the whole house, and seemed in no part of it

more intense than in this great, book-lined room, in which Godfrey

Heron had spent so much of his life.

Ida lay back in the great arm-chair in which he had sat, her small

brown hands lying limply in her lap, her eyes fixed absently upon the

open book which lay on the table as he had left it. The pallor of her

face, increased by her sorrow, was accentuated by the black dress,

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almost as plainly made as that which the red-eyed Jessie wore in her

kitchen. Though nearly a week had elapsed since her father had died in

her young arms, and notwithstanding her capacity for self-reliance, Ida

had not yet recovered from the stupor of the shock.

She was scarcely thinking as she lay back in his chair and looked at

the table over which he had bent for so many monotonous years; she

scarcely realised that he had passed out of her life, and that she was

alone in the world; and she was only vaguely conscious that her sorrow

had, so to speak, a double edge; that she had lost not only her father,

but the man to whom she had given her heart, the man who should have

been standing beside her now, shielding her with his strong arms,

comforting her with words of pity and love. The double blow had fallen

so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the pain of it had been dulled and

blunted. The capacity of human nature for suffering is, after all not

unlimited. God says to physical pain and mental anguish, "Thus far and

no farther;" and this limitation saved Ida from utter collapse.

Then, again, she was not free to indulge in idle grief, in the luxury

of woe; the great house had still to be run, she had to bury her

beloved dead, the mourning which seems such a hopeless mockery when the

heart is racked with misery, had to be seen to; and she did it, and

went through it all, with outward calm, sustained by that Heron spirit

which may be described as the religion of her class--_noblesse oblige_.

Jessie had wept loudly through the house ever since the death, and

could weep as loudly now; but if Ida shed any tears she wept in the

silence and darkness of her own room, and no one heard her utter a

moan. "To suffer in silence and be strong" was the badge of all her

tribe, and she wore it with quiet stoicism.




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