A Barren Title: A Novel

by T. W. Speight

"Why do you talk of such things? I hope and trust you will be with us for many a day to come."

"You know better than that, dear. My time is very short how. But I think I should like to have my real name on my tombstone--if my real name is what you tell me."

"It is your real name, and everything shall be as you wish."

A smile of satisfaction crept over the dying woman's face. "I think I can sleep a little now," she said, "and you must be tired, sitting here so long. There's your Turkish pipe in the cupboard downstairs, and I told Moggy to have some of your favorite mixture in readiness for you."

Mrs. Fildew died the following afternoon. She sank into a sleep as calm as that of an infant, and did not wake again. Her husband and son were with her at the last. Cecilia had seen her two days before the earl's arrival. "It is not half such a trouble to leave my boy as I thought it would be," Mrs. Fildew said to her. "I know that you and he love each other, and that I leave him in the best of hands. Don't worry your mind about the housekeeping, dear--you will have servants to do all that for you. Clement will like to see you nicely dressed when he comes home. Those pretty hands were never made to be spoiled by pickles and preserves."

The earl buried his wife under the name she had so long been known by. To have made use of any other would have led to questions which as yet he was not prepared to meet. "By and by, when I put up the tombstone, the world shall know her by her proper name and title, but not now--not now." To his son's surprise he bought a private lot in one of the cemeteries, and had an expensive bricked grave made. The cost seemed to be no object to him. Clem wondered, but said nothing. On the evening of the day after the funeral the earl bade farewell to his son for a little while, and went back to Laurel Cottage.

[CHAPTER XVII.]

GOLDEN DREAMS.

It was impossible for Lord Loughton to wear deep mourning for his wife without provoking sundry inconvenient inquiries, so he simply put a narrow band round his hat, and wore gloves stitched with black. "I've lost an old and very dear friend," he remarked, incidentally, here and there. "Some one I knew when I was abroad many years ago. Quite cut me up to hear that he was gone."

Over the solitary pipe in which he indulged the last thing before going to bed he often found his thoughts wandering off in the direction of Miss Tebbuts. Here were twenty thousand pounds ready to drop into his hands for, without self-flattery, in which, to do him justice, he rarely indulged, he fully believed that if he were to ask the lady to become Countess of Loughton he need not fear a refusal. It was true, he had promised Flicker that in consideration of his augmented income all thoughts of matrimony should be banished from his mind. But circumstances when he made that promise were different with him from what they were now, and, in any case, such a promise could hardly be held to be finally binding. Should he decide to become a Benedick once more, he would give due notice to the countess. Everything should be fair and above-board. He often chuckled to himself when he tried to picture the dismay and rage with which the dowager would greet any notice of his impending marriage. And yet the real fun of the affair lay, not in the fact of his contracting a second marriage, but in the much more significant fact of his having a grown-up son and heir ready to his hand. What the dowager would say and do in case it ever came to her ears that there was already in existence a strapping young man of five feet eleven inches who was entitled to call himself Lord Shoreham if he only knew it, was more than even the earl could imagine. The news would almost be enough to kill her. He would be amply revenged on her for all her slights and insults one of these days.