When Joanna Grice died in the place of her birth, among the townspeople
with whom her whole existence had been passed, every eye was tearless
that looked on her funeral procession; the two strangers who made part
of it, gossiped pleasantly as they rode after the hearse about the news
of the morning; and the sole surviving member of her family, whom
chance had brought to her door on her burial-day, stood aloof from the
hired mourners, and moved not a step to follow her to the grave.
No: not a step. The hearse rolled on slowly towards the churchyard, and
the sight-seers in the lane followed it; but Matthew Grice stood by the
garden paling, at the place where he had halted from the first. What
was her death to him? Nothing but the loss of his first chance of
tracing Arthur Carr. Tearlessly and pitilessly she had left it to
strangers to bury her brother's daughter; and now, tearlessly and
pitilessly, there stood her brother's son, leaving it to strangers to
bury _her._
"Don't you mean to follow to the churchyard, and see the last of it?"
inquired the same inquisitive voice, which had twice already endeavored
to attract Mat's attention.
He turned round this time to look at the speaker, and confronted a
wizen, flaxen-haired, sharp-faced man, dressed in a jaunty
shooting-jacket, carrying a riding-cane in his hand, and having a
thorough-bred black-and-tan terrier in attendance at his heels.
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