It had just come in the household despatch-box from Hayle, and bore the Porthellick postmark, so he tore it open with trembling hands. CHAPTER XXIII. A LEGAL "FRIEND." Constance never smiled again; yet in the presence of Sybil she never gave way to the paroxysms of passionate grief that came over her when she was alone or in the seclusion of her own chamber. Wealth and title, so long looked forward to in the years that were gone, seemed alike most worthless now, save that with the loss of these her children lost their position in life, and herself her name and honour! Ever present was the idea, Oh that her husband could look up from his grave, and see the impending ruin and desolation of their once-happy home! for, as we have already said, their means of subsistence died with him. And now, how were they to live? The present time was agony; the future dark and gloomy. Paragraphs, the tenour of which proved intensely annoying to Downie Trevelyan and all his family, and which were painful and degrading to Constance and Sybil (for such they felt them to be), began to find their way into the local and even the London papers, under exciting titles or headings, such as "Singular Case of Presumption," or "Insanity," "The Cornish Widow again," "The Lamorna Peerage," and so forth; and Messrs. Gorbelly and Culverhole, as "his Lordship's solicitors," in writing answers or contradictions to some of these effusions, were but too happy, by such legal advertisements, to mix their somewhat obscure and vulgar names with the affair. Audley read those insulting notices, assertions, and contradictions with infinite sorrow and pain, for then Sybil's pleading and upbraiding eyes would come before him. Through such uncourted publicity, however, the mother and daughter began to find themselves coldly viewed by neighbours now. The rector ceased to come near the villa; the village doctor whipped up his horse as he passed the end of the willow avenue; and even the usually friendly Trecarrels left for town--rumour said correctly, for India--without paying another visit, though perhaps, as theirs had never been returned, they could not do otherwise. All the charity and good they had performed, in all the necessities relieved, all the ailments alleviated, all the countless little kindnesses done, went for nothing now; for the world is a malevolent and censorious one; and that devilish maxim of Rochefoucauld, that people feel a strange satisfaction in the misfortunes of their best friends, was fully exemplified. Constance's new and startling assertion of rank and position, however meekly done, formed excellent food for the tongues of the malicious and vulgar, who exist everywhere. She had to bear unjustly the contempt of many, the ridicule of all; so that her pretty villa became daily less and less a home.