And yet within half an hour, Lady Dighton was talking to her husband quite calmly about some home affairs which interested him; and Maurice had begun to calculate how soon he could get away for that long-deferred six weeks' absence.
But, of course, although they could not keep their thoughts prisoners, these mourners, who were genuine mourners after their different degrees, were constrained to observe the decorous, quiet, and interregnum of all ordinary occupation, which custom demands after a death.

Lady Dighton returned home next day, hidden in her carriage, and went to shut herself up in her own house until the funeral.

Maurice remained at Hunsdon, where he was now master, and spent his days in the library writing letters, or trying to make plans for his future, and it was then that the letter with his lost message to Mrs.Costello was sent off.
Yet the space between Mr.Beresford's death and his funeral was to his heir a tedious and profitless blank.

He had till now been kept here by living powers, gratitude and reverence; death came, and handed his custody over to cold but tyrannous propriety.

Now he rebelled with all his heart, and spent hours of each solitary day in pacing backwards and forwards the whole space of the great dim room which seemed a prison to him.
The day before the funeral broke this stillness, two or three gentlemen, distant relations or old friends of his grandfather, came to Hunsdon, and towards evening there arrived the family solicitor, Mr.Payne.