So though the papers were full of the sudden death of the great man, each vying with the others as to the extent and accuracy of their biographical notices, the actual mourners were few; and with but little of outward parade or ostentation, the mortal remains of Hartford Vere were carried to the grave. Ralph Severn, sitting at breakfast that morning in his mother’s villa at Vevey, observed casually that the Member for —— was dead. “A useful man he was a very useful man. His party will miss him exceedingly. There are rumours, I see, that his private affairs are in some confusion. Always the case with these public men. I hope, however, it may not be true.” “Was he a friend of yours, then?” asked Florence. “O dear, no,” replied he, “I have seen him, of course, and heard him speak. But I never spoke to him. I am far too small a person to be hand in glove with the leading politicians of the day. But I should be sorry to think that a man who had spent his life, as he believed, for the good of his country, should leave his family unprovided for.” “Has he left a large family?” asked Lady Severn. “No,” said Ralph, consulting the paper; “a son and a daughter, I think it said somewhere. His wife died many years ago. By the bye, she was one of those beautiful Miss Percies of Merivale, mother. You remember Merivale, of course? That queer old place near my Uncle Brackley’s. It is sold now, but the last time I was in Brentshire I went to see it. The Veres were Brentshire people, too, were they not?” “Oh dear, yes, one of the oldest families there,” said Lady Severn, who prided herself on her genealogical accuracy, and was supposed to be particularly well up in Brentshire family lore, Lord Brackley, the great man of the county, being her step-brother. “I remember them well long ago. But the present head of the family, this Mr. Vere’s uncle or cousin, I forget which, married a great heiress, and emigrated to some other country.” “Ah, indeed!” replied Sir Ralph, for whom these details possessed no peculiar interest, and whose thoughts were just then painfully engrossed by private troubles of his own, complicated of late in an altogether unexpected way. “Ah, indeed!” said he, and straightway forgot all about the death of Mr. Vere, and fell to thinking of very different matters. To return, however, to our poor little Marion. On the morning of the funeral she received at last what she had so long been looking for—an Indian letter! Not, alas! in the familiar hand that was wont to cause her such pleasure; for in all the seven years of her married life in the East, Mrs. Archer had seldom allowed a mail to pass without writing to her little cousin—that dear handwriting she would never, never see again. This letter had a deep black border, and the address was written in a firm, large hand, very different from Cissy’s characteristic scratch. It was from Colonel Archer.