Fanny had not done it, up to the end; and as Hugh well knew, her spiritual adviser, the rector Douglas Swann, had not been able, in the course of many visits, to bring himself to steer the conversation round to the state of her soul. Fanny had not been equipped for the seriousness of mortality, and one had felt, in the midst of grief, almost embarrassed for her in this respect.

When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment.

His own beauty, such as it was, had certainly consumed away some time ago. Others of his contemporaries had done better, he reflected, as he looked across at his old friend and rival Humphrey Finch. Humphrey, for instance, had kept his hair. He stood now in a respectful attitude under his umbrella, his enviable head with its thick white mane soberly bowed, while his eyes rested thoughtfully upon Hugh's grandson. Humphrey was a quick man and Hugh was a slow man; and although Humphrey's career had come to an untimely end after an incident in Marrakesh which even the British Foreign Service, with its wide tolerance of eccentricity, could not overlook, Hugh still felt that Humphrey had been the more successful of the two. Hugh's own career in the Civil Service after he had decided, or rather discovered, that he was not a painter, had been if not exactly meteoric at least exemplary and such as could pass as distinguished. Flattering words in high quarters had attended his retirement. Yes, he could pass as a distinguished man; just as he could pass as a good husband, and few would ever know anything to the contrary. But the terror and the glory of life had passed him by.

Hugh shifted his gaze to the neighbouring umbrella under which he made out the unusually fashionable hat and unusually subdued face of Humphrey's wife, Mildred, who, although she had not been particularly fond of Fanny, had produced for the occasion a look of?heavy? reflective melancholy and even a few tears.