She felt a vague desire to warn the victim of her father’s character, of his pitiless cruelty, of his unutterable brutality; but she knew that it would be unfilial to do so, and would be probably an act useless, misunderstood, and attributed to some selfish motive. She knew the world well enough to be aware that, whatever we may do to serve another, we are always suspected of serving our own interests. To her it was evident that the saucy and thievish rodent had run once too often and once too near the claws and teeth of the tom-cat, who had let her gambol before him only to seize her and crunch her at leisure. She came very close toward the truth in her observations and deductions, but she shut her suspicions up in her own breast, and said nothing to anyone, being used to live without confidantes and to put a padlock on her lips. “Who would ever have thought Sourisette would be so depressed by her little beast of a husband’s death?” said the friends who saw her at Ems that summer, one to another. They found her extremely altered; she was nervous, pale, had lost her spirits, and shut herself up a great deal, alleging her mourning. “Mouse as _la veuve inconsolable_ is too droll,” said her world; but when it became known that the guardians and executors had taken away the Otterbourne jewels, including the roc’s egg, and locked them up, never to be unlocked until Jack should attain his majority, her female friends argued that it was no wonder she felt such an insult. “It is not an insult. It is the law. The trustees are obliged to do it; the little Duke’s a minor,” explained their male relatives. But to the female mind this kind of explanation always appears as trivial as it is impertinent. The general impression was given in society that Hurstmanceaux was very harsh to his sister, and that his unkindness was the cause of her loss of spirits and change of habits; moreover, it was said that it was he who had insisted on her rupture with Brancepeth. Altogether she was pitied and admired, for her conduct had been quite admirable ever since the day that her wreath of forget-me-nots had been placed on poor Cocky’s grave, almost side by side with Lily Larking’s harp of calla lilies. No one noticed that when she went on from Ems to Homburg, William Massarene went there also a few days later, whilst his wife and daughter remained at Vale Royal; no one except the courtly diplomatist of the silk dressing-gown, who was at Homburg too, and who observed that she did not bully “Billy” as she had done in the days of the Bird rooms, and that when “Billy” approached her there came into her eyes a flash of hate, a gleam of fear and loathing. Also that whatever he proposed in the way of walking, driving, or dining, she acquiesced in with a certain sullenness but with unusual docility.