If her tears were near the surface, they were at least genuine, and filmed her violet eyes and reddened her pretty eyelids quite as effectually as if they had welled from the depths of her being.
Her black frock lent a matured dignity to her figure, and paled her delicate complexion with the refinement of suffering.

Even Clarence was moved in that dark and haggard abstraction that had settled upon him since his strange outbreak over the body of his old friend.
The extent of that change had not been noticed by Mrs.Peyton, who had only observed that Clarence had treated her grief with a grave and silent respect.

She was grateful for that.

A repetition of his boyish impulsiveness would have been distasteful to her at such a moment.

She only thought him more mature and more subdued, and as the only man now in her household his services had been invaluable in the emergency.
The funeral had taken place at Santa Inez, where half the county gathered to pay their last respects to their former fellow-citizen and neighbor, whose legal and combative victories they had admired, and whom death had lifted into a public character.