"Can't you leave these proverbial condolences to Lionel?" broke in her exasperated husband.
"Oh, Bunny"--with a wail--"the sacred dead."
"Let the child talk," commanded Pentland; "she expresses my feelings."
Thus encouraged, the child did talk, and Lady Jim listened with a bent head to original remarks about Time, the great consoler, and meetings on a golden shore, to part no more, and keeping the loved memory green, and bowing to the inevitable, and such-like official utterances, without which no funeral is complete. When Hilda stopped for want of breath and memory, Leah kissed her with the affection of one deeply moved, and observed that she was tired. And indeed she was--bored to death, in fact. So the Marchioness, pleased with her plagiarised eloquence, took leave tactfully and tearfully on the Duke's arm. Frith lingered.
"Why don't you laugh?" he said dryly.
"At Hilda in the pulpit? Why should I. She means well."
"Huh! I allude to your demure listening. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, and, after all, Jim was my brother. But are you really and truly sorry?"
"In a way, if you will press for an answer. One can't live five years with a man without missing him at the breakfast-table."
"Hum! Though you and I pretend otherwise, to console my father, we know that Jim was no saint."
"Am I?" she asked, shrugging.