"And a good man every way. Gentle and kind--too gentle and kind, for that matter. Thank God we're all Christians. Blessed are the meek. His cup of joy is full, and where he is now, Humphrey, his only grief is to see ours."
"That's the sort of stuff that's got you a great name for a sympathetic and feeling man, I suppose? D'you mean it, or is it just the natural flow of words, as the rain falls and the water rolls down-hill? I tell you that he was a good man, and a man to make others happy in his mild, humble way. Feeble you might call him here and there. And his feebleness ended him. Too feeble to face life without that heartless baggage!"
"Leave her alone. You don't understand that side, and this isn't the time to try and make you. She's hit hard enough."
Humphrey regarded his brother with a blazing glance of rage. Then his features relaxed and he smiled strangely at his own heart, but not at Nathan.
"I was forgetting," he said. Then he relapsed into silence.
"My Mark wasn't much more than a picture hung on a wall to some people. Perhaps he wasn't much more to me. But you miss the picture if 'tis taken down. I never thought of such a thing happening. I didn't know or guess all that was hidden bottled up in him. I thought he was getting over it; but, lover-like, he couldn't think she'd really gone. Then something--the woman herself, I suppose--rubbed it into him that there was no more hope; and then he took himself off like this. For such a worthless rag--to think! And I suppose she'll hear his bell next Sunday without turning a hair."
"Don't say that. She's terribly cut up and distressed. And I'm sure none--none will ever listen to his bell like we used to. 'Twill always have a sad message for everybody that knew Mark."
"Humbug and trash! You'll be the first to laugh and crack your jokes and all the rest of it, the day that girl marries. And the bell clashing overhead, and the ashes of him in the ground under. Let me choose the man--let me choose the man when she takes a husband!"
Nathan perceived that his brother did not know the truth. It was no moment to speak of Cora and Ned Baskerville, however.
"I've just come from the inquest," he said. "Of course 'twas brought in 'unsound mind.'"