eyes unaccustomed to weeping shed soft tears of gratitude and spoke of her with a wondering tenderness of worship and reverence as though she had been a saint. The Press made light of her work, and had scarce a word of sympathy for her untimely demise; their general ‘tone’ being that adopted by the late Edward Fitzgerald, who wrote of one of England’s greatest poets thus:—‘Mrs Barrett Browning is dead. Thank God we shall have no more “Aurora Leighs!”’ It is the usual manner assumed by men who have neither the brain nor the feeling to write an ‘Aurora Leigh’ themselves. All the same, the public ‘rushed,’ in its usual impulsive fashion, for the last book Delicia had written, and when they got it, such a chorus of enthusiasm arose as entirely overwhelmed the ordinary press cackle and brought down the applauding verdict of such reasoning readers and sober judges who did not waste their time in writing newspaper paragraphs. Delicia’s name became greater in death than in life; and only one person spoke of her with flippant ease and light disparagement; this was her husband. His indignation at finding her fortune entirely disposed of among ‘charities’ was too deep and genuine to be concealed. He considered his allowance of two hundred and fifty a year an ‘insult,’ and he became an ardent supporter of the tyrannic theories of the would-be little Nero of Germany, who permits a law to be in active force which unjustly provides that all the earnings of wives shall belong to their husbands. He considered the painter-poet-composer-autocrat of the Fatherland an extremely sensible person, and wished such a law might be carried into effect in England. He forgot all Delicia’s tenderness, all her beauty, all her intelligence, all her thoughtfulness and consideration for his personal comfort; and all her love counted as nothing when set against the manner in which he considered he had been ‘done’ in the results of his marriage with an ‘unsexed’ woman of genius. But gradually, very gradually, by some mysterious means, probably best known to Lady Brancewith, who had never forgiven the slight inflicted on her by his look and manner when he suddenly refused to drive home with her after promising to do so, rumour began to whisper the story of his selfishness, and to comment upon it. ‘He had committed no crime. Oh, no,’ said society, beginning to waver in its former adoration of his manly perfections, ‘but he broke his wife’s heart! Yes, that was it! How he did it nobody quite knew; there was something about the “Marina” woman at the “Empire,” but nothing was quite certain. Anyhow, she died very suddenly, and Lord Carlyon was away at the time.’ And as people nowadays hardly ever express regret for a person’s death, but immediately ask ‘What money has been left behind?’ the gossips had ample food for reflection, in the fact that nearly forty thousand pounds was Delicia’s legacy to the poor.