There had been so much solidarity between Cocky and herself in their way of looking at life, in their enjoyment of ruse and expedient, in their mutual sense of the injustice and the nuisance of things, that this sympathy between them had prevented her from perceiving that the man she had married hated her very bitterly for having married him. She was not in the least prepared for the many forms of vengeance which were gathered together in that neat and formal document which was the last will and testament of the companion of her life. Cocky had never expected to outlive his father; but he had always said to himself: “By God, if I _do_----!” The law--that stiff, starched, unbending, and unpleasant thing which comes so often between us and our desires--had denied him the pleasure of doing much that he had wished to do, but all that it had let him do he had done to punish and torment the lady who had wedded him “with a card up her sleeve.” When Hurstmanceaux and Alberic Orme came to visit her, after the lawyers and the other members of the family had left the castle, they were both surprised to see how seriously depressed and how much worn she looked. “Did you see Lily Larking’s wreath? It was too droll,” were her first words. Lord Alberic briefly replied that he had not. “It was scandalous that it was allowed to pass the church doors,” said Hurstmanceaux. “I suppose they did not know.” “Of course they did not know; who should have heard of Lily Larking in Somersetshire? We can go up to town to-night, can’t we, Ronnie?” “Do you wish it? There is a ten o’clock train. The children would be better in bed.” “That does not matter. I want to be in town.” She was anxious to get away from Staghurst, which had grown hateful to her, and was very desirious to learn something which she could only learn in London, _viva voce_, from her own lawyer, Mr. Gregge, a gentleman who had not been invited to either of the funerals, though his existence, as her confidential adviser, had been known to both the families. She and her brother and brother-in-law dined together at eight o’clock. She was silent and pre-occupied. “Who would ever have imagined that any woman would lament Cocky’s loss?” thought Alberic Orme; and Hurstmanceaux thought, “_Souvent femme varie, bien fol qui s’y fie_. The idea of her mourning for Cocky!” They could not see into her mind, which was gloomy and troubled, like the dark old ponds which were lying black under a fitful moonlight in the melancholy park without.