It was in that very crypt that Stephen's mother had been buried, and had they two gone in, as they had intended, the girl might have seen her mother's coffin as he had seen his father's, but under circumstances which made him shiver.

He had been, as he said, often in the crypt at Carstone; and well he knew the sordidness of the chamber of death.

His imagination was alive as well as his memory; he shuddered, not for himself, but for Stephen.

How could he allow the girl to suffer in such a way as she might, as she infallibly would, if it were made apparent to her in such a brutal way?
How pitiful, how meanly pitiful, is the aftermath of death.

Well he remembered how many a night he woke in an agony, thinking of how his father lay in that cold, silent, dust-strewn vault, in the silence and the dark, with never a ray of light or hope or love! Gone, abandoned, forgotten by all, save perhaps one heart which bled.