She lies like an exquisite waxen image, her sweet voice silenced, her blithe laugh hushed, her slender white arms crossed on her stilled heart, and a snowy Eucharis lily resting upon her breast.
“Oh, my lord! put this somewhere near her from me!” poor Hargreaves had said through blinding tears.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and Lord Beranger, knowing with what a true, honest, unselfish love this young fellow had loved his lost child, places the lily on her breast with his own hands.
* * * * * * * *
The day after Baby is laid to rest, Hargreaves is found near the Beranger vault; one hand grasps a locket with a bit of golden hair in it, near the other hand is the revolver with which he has shot himself. It was true what he had said, that he loved her with the love of a dog, that would just lie down and die beside her grave.
But the matter is at once hushed up, for the convenances do not allow of canaille even killing themselves for the sake of daughters of Belgravia.
CHAPTER IX.
LET THE DEAD PAST BE BURIED.
“Let this be said between us here,
One love grows green when one turns grey,
This year knows nothing of last year,
To-morrow has no more to say to yesterday.”
“The pomps and vanities and sinful lusts of the flesh” being put a stop to by poor little Baby’s untimely death, Lady Beranger has elected to mourn in sackcloth and ashes among the sylvan shades of Sandilands. It would be dreadful to assert that this worldly mother does not lament to a certain degree the gap in the domestic circle, or that now and again the memory of Baby’s sweet pretty face and winsome, kittenish ways does not bring a mist into her fine eyes, but this much is true, that she leaves Belgravia with regret, especially as the season is not quite dead. And now that three months have nearly gone by since
“Mirabelle Beranger,
Aged 17,”