A coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.
The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock beneath the darkening November sky.

"It's too bad!" he half whispered, his lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go.

For this was his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.
She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards: urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in unthought pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky.

Against such a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without hope and without regret.

But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting--she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world.