'Why don't you go on?' she asked, surprised.

He did not like to tell her then. Somehow, it seemed out of place.
He had often spoken to her of his father, and she had always been a
sympathetic listener; but here, at the entrance of the grim vault, he
did not wish to pain her with his own thoughts of sorrow and all the
terrible memories which the similarity of the place evoked. And even
whilst he hesitated there came to him a thought so laden with pain
and fear that he rejoiced at the pause which gave it to him in time.
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 . . .
He would save little Stephen, if he could, from such a memory. He
would not give any reason for refusing to go in.

He blew out the candle, and turned the key in the lock, took it out,
and put it in his pocket.

'Come, Stephen!' he said, 'let us go somewhere else. We will not go