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object you have undertaken, that I shall hesitate for a moment to bear.”

Mr. Bucket makes Sir Leicester’s bow again, as a response to this liberality.

“My mind,” Sir Leicester adds, with generous warmth, “has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full of indignation to-night, after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent.”

Sir Leicester’s voice trembles, and his grey hair stirs upon his head. Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused.

“I declare,” he says, “I solemnly declare that until this crime is discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as if there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first marked because of his association with my house—which may have suggested his possessing greater wealth, and being altogether of greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have indicated. If I cannot with my means, and my influence, and my position, bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the assertion of my respect for that gentleman’s memory, and of my fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me.”

While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness, looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr. Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.

“The ceremony of to-day,” continues Sir Leicester, “strikingly illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend;" he lays a stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions; “was held by the flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my brother who had committed it, I would not spare him.”

Mr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he was the trustiest and dearest person!

“You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss,” replies Mr. Bucket, soothingly, “no doubt. He was calculated to be a deprivation, I’m sure he was.”

Volumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she lives; that her nerves are unstrung for ever; and that she has not the least expectation of smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a cocked-hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of her melancholy condition.

“It gives a start to a delicate female,” says Mr. Bucket, sympathetically “but it’ll wear oft’.”

Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether