“The world shall read how we stood, side by side, at the door of the vault,” thought Mr. Jerningham; “and the lips of Slander shall be mute about the poor soul’s friendship for her father’s friend.” Mr. Desmond understood and appreciated the delicacy of mind which had inspired the invitation. Even in that last dread ceremonial it was well that there should be some votive offering to Society. That deity has her shrine in every temple, and must be propitiated alike at wedding-feast or funeral. She is the modern successor of those nameless goddesses whom the men of old called amiable, and worshipped in mortal fear. Theodore de Bergerac was present at the opening and closing of the vault, and invited Laurence Desmond to dinner when they left the church; but his invitation was declined. “I will run down to dine with you in a week or two, if you will allow me,” he said; “but to-day it is impossible. I have business that will take me back to town.” And so they parted; Laurence to go back to his chambers and spend the evening in dreary meditation, looking over the letters that had been written to him by that hand which now lay cold in the Berkshire vault. He had a photograph of the never-to-be-forgotten face, a few water-colour sketches of the river-scenery about Hampton; and these were all his memorials of the dead. He packed them carefully in white paper, sealed the packet with many seals, and laid it in the most secret drawer of his desk. “Thus ends the love of my youth,” he said, to himself; “God grant the love of my manhood may come to a happier ending!” The first two months of his widowhood Mr. Jerningham spent abroad. For some subtle reason of his own he preferred to be away from Greenlands, and from his friends at the cottage, during that period of conventional mourning. Perhaps he would have been less inclined to absent himself from that beloved retreat if Eustace Thorburn had still been a dweller in M. de Bergerac’s household. That gentleman’s residence in Paris threatened to extend itself to several months. The work found for him amongst old manuscripts and rare Oriental books increased every day, and the notes of the great history seemed likely to become as voluminous as Gibbon’s _Rome_. Like Gibbon, M. de Bergerac had bestowed the greater part of his lifetime upon the collection of materials for his great book; but the materials, when collected, were more difficult to deal with than those upon which the matchless historian founded his massive monument of human genius; or it may be that M. de Bergerac was something less than Gibbon. In earnestness, at least, he was that great man’s equal. “Do not leave Paris until you have completely sifted the Oriental department of the library,” he wrote to his secretary; “and if it is necessary for you to have the aid of a translator, do not hesitate to engage one.”