"Certainly not. I am still my Master's servant. He has merely raised me to a higher and more responsible position in His household."
"Raised your wages also," murmured Leah, shrugging. "I beg your pardon, Lionel, I should not have said that."
"You should not, indeed," was the pained response.
"It's a kind of hysteria," apologised Lady Jim, almost at a loss for an excuse, "like that man who botanised on his mother's grave, you know. Besides, people who really feel, laugh awfully when sorrow comes. And Jim's death took most of my tears--poor dear Jim! I daresay you think that I am unfeeling; but I'm not--really and truly, I'm not. What with these dear things dying so unexpectedly, and my own feeling of widowhood, and condolences from people who will say the wrong thing, I feel broken-hearted."
Lionel smiled grimly at this incoherent and wholly false explanation.
"You have a strange way of showing grief, Lady James."
"Don't be nasty, now that you are up in the world. I'll be quite different with Hilda, poor soul, though I must be natural with you. It is a compliment, if you only look at it in the right way, which of course, with your priggishness, you won't. And you needn't use that cheap title of mine, just to remind me how nearly I've missed being called by a more expensive one. I suppose Joan will be your duchess. Do you think she will fill the position!"
"Admirably."
"How curt! There is still a lot of the parson about you, Lionel."
"And ever will be."