Nevertheless, when the news of the irreparable event reached her, my Lady, being the best-hearted little woman in the world, wept herself for quite three minutes, and then, dispatching her Lord to see what service he could be to poor Sir Jasper, ordered her sedan and had herself deposited at Madame Mirabel’s in Bond Street, to order a black bonnet and mourning mantle for the funeral. My Lord had set out on his melancholy errand with a dutiful concealment of its intense distastefulness. He thought Jasper’s case the most confounded dreadful a man could be placed in, and shrank, with all his Irish softness, from the spectacle of a woe beyond his consolation. He found matters even more tragic than he anticipated. The last word Sir Jasper’s incomparable Julia murmured to him, as, her hand in his, she left him for a better world, was to remind him of his promise never to replace her. This pledge had been exacted many times during the seven years of their existence together, but never more solemnly than in the hours that had preceded her demise. From the moment of her seizure--spasms on the lungs--to that last breath, Sir Jasper had been in unremitting attendance. Every physician of note had been summoned to her bedside; but, in spite of all the resources of science, bloodings, blisters and cuppings, pills and potions, poor Julia Standish persisted in succumbing. He was the most afflicted of widowers! She had been the pearl of wives. No woman could ever compare with her in the whole world again. He was a blasted man. Console himself! he roared. That angel, that departed saint need have put him to no promise. She might sleep in peace; her Jasper was henceforth naught but a solitary mourner. What was left him, indeed, but to live for his little ones, those five pledges of their mutual affection; to rear them worthy of such a mother, and, his task accomplished, take his broken heart to lie beside her in the grave? “For I will be buried with my Julia,” he cried upon each fresh gush of tears. “Faith,” said Lord Kilcroney to his Kitty, describing the scene to her when they met again, “she’s dropt her mantle upon him with a vengeance. Wasn’t it the watering-pot you used to call her, me darling? The poor lady. He caught me by the neck a while ago, and troth he soaked me to the skin. ‘She was the most elegant woman!’ cries he. ‘She was that, me lad,’ says I. ‘And the most virtuous!’ cries he, with another gulp. ‘Aye, that she was,’ cries I. And sure, Kitty, if ever a poor soul made virtue tedious and dismal----” “Hush, hush!” my Lady Kilcroney interrupted. “Speak no ill of the dead, sir. Poor Julia, she was a fond, foolish creature, but she was an old friend, and, ’pon honour. Denis, I’m crying for her myself. ’Tis but fitting indeed, that Sir Jasper, who was a sad, bad husband, my love, and would have given any woman red eyes, should mourn her now.”