Something less than a year after his marriage, Glazzard was summoned back to England by news of his brother's death.

On the point of quitting Highmead, with Ivy, for a sojourn abroad, William Glazzard had an apoplectic seizure and died within the hour.

His affairs were in disorder; he left no will; for some time it would remain uncertain whether the relatives inherited anything but debt.
Eustace and his wife took a house in the north of London, a modest temporary abode.

There, at the close of March, Serena gave birth to a child.
During the past year Glazzard had returned to his old amusement of modelling in clay.

He drew and painted, played and composed, at intervals; but plastic art seemed to have the strongest hold upon him.
Through April he was busy with a head for which he had made many studies--a head of Judas; in Italy he had tried to paint the same subject, but ineffectually.