Lily Larking, of the Salamander Music Hall, of course.
It was too irresistibly droll. She laughed till she really cried.
Happily all human emotions are so closely related that irrepressible laughter resembles irrepressible tears enough to deceive a newspaper correspondent and a sympathetic crowd.
“Isn’t it too comical?” she said to her sister Carrie.
“Very droll, yes,” said Lady Wisbeach. “Awfully cheeky in the woman sending a wreath here.”
“How Cocky would laugh if he knew,” said his widow; she could not divest herself of the feeling that Cocky did know, and did enjoy, the farce of his own burial.
Poor Cocky! Well, he was buried for good and all, with his crowns and crosses and harps and garlands all left to wither and rot above him, and he would never bore her and worry her and annoy her any more. She felt almost charitably toward him; he might have been worse, he might have been interfering and difficult and quarrelsome, and might have noticed, as his father had done, that the pretty children in his nursery had little resemblance to his family portraits. All was quite safe now, and he was silent for ever under his mass of decaying flowers.
She passed to her carriage on her brother’s arm, amidst a respectful murmur of deep admiration and of that genuine good feeling which is so often awakened in crowds, they know not why and hardly know for whom.
“Poor dear pretty crittur, widdered in all her bloom!” said a good village dame to her husband, the water in her honest eyes as they followed the two little fair heads of the orphaned boys.
Then they all returned to the castle, and the will was read, and the thing was over, and she ate a luncheon in her own rooms with a good appetite.