The Dead Man's Secret

It was a very stately ceremonial that which passed through the gates of Hunsden Hall, to lay Harold Godfrey Hunsden's ashes with those of many scores of Hunsdens who had gone before.

The heir at law---an impoverished London swell--was there in sables and sweeping hat-band, exulting inwardly that the old chap had gone at last, and "the king had got his own again."

Sir Everard Kingsland was there, conspicuous and interesting in his new capacity of betrothed to the dead man's daughter.

And the dead man's daughter herself, in trailing crape and sables, deathly pale and still, was likewise there, cold and rigid almost as the corpse itself.

For she had never shed a tear since that awful moment when, with a wild, wailing cry of orphanage, she had flung herself down on the dead breast as the new day dawned.

The day of the funeral was one of ghostly gloom. The November wind swept icily over the sea with a dreary wail of winter; the cold rain beat its melancholy drip, drip; sky and earth and sea were all blurred in a clammy mist.

White and wild, Harriet Hunsden hung on her lover's arm while the Reverend Cyrus Green solemnly read the touching burial service, and Harold Hunsden was laid to sleep the everlasting sleep.

And then she was going back to the desolate old home--oh, so horribly desolate now! She looked at his empty chamber, at his vacant chair, at his forsaken bed. Her face worked; with a long, anguished cry she flung herself on her lover's breast and wept the rushing, passionate tears of seventeen that keep youthful hearts from breaking.