“The least said about it the better. There are noble griefs, and there are ugly sorrows: mine was of the latter order. When Cicely died, my mother was at a State Ball. She knew the child was hopelessly ill before she went, but a dress had arrived that morning from Paris, and a State Ball is a duty; in fact, all social functions are duties which come before mere human feelings. After so many years, I can still see that gorgeous apparition as she came into the room to speak to the hospital nurse. I did not understand the meaning of it all, but felt awed by the soft murmurs of the nurse, the dim light, and the haughty manner of my mother. Next day the nursery was closed; I was kept in the room of the head nurse to play with my toys, and told severely not to make a noise. I asked for Cicely. The under-housemaid, a good sort of a country girl, took me by the hand and led me into the room where little Cicely was laid out. One bunch of narcissus was lying on her feet; they were the nurse’s last tribute to her little dead patient. And that was all. I realised nothing, I was seven years old. The days that followed were miserable; I missed my playmate and was daily brought down to my mother’s boudoir, to be interviewed by simpering old dowagers who gave me a cold kiss, and waggish young men who shook hands with me and called me “old fellow,” as if I had already entered some crack regiment, or won the Derby. My mother, in her diaphanous black chiffon, distributed cups of tea right and left, while she related in short sentences the end of little Cicely and the brilliancy of the State Ball.” “When I think, Lionel, that you and I were on the eve of repeating that same lamentable story—” “Enough of this horrid past, my beautiful Una; let us forget that it ever existed, and let us think of the present, of you, and of our future.” They had reached Hyde Park Corner. Gwendolen gave a circuitous glance on the scene that surrounded them, and remarked that the Duke of Wellington’s statue had disappeared. “Where has the statue gone to, Lion?” “Oh! Did you not know that it had been removed yesterday? You will never any more see Nelson on his column, Gordon holding his Bible, Napier with his gilded spurs, nor Canning, Disraeli, and so many others, on their pedestals—they have all been taken to South Kensington, for the present. The idea is to build a new hall outside London for all these relics of the past, where they may be viewed by the very few who are anxious to study the curios of an old worn-out civilisation. The Committee has come to the conclusion that our newly-revealed sense of modesty must inevitably be shocked by these indecorous memorials to our great men; and it has decided that the education of the masses must at once begin by the removal of objects more fit for a chamber of horrors than for the contemplation of pure-minded citizens.” “But what will they put on the pedestals and columns?”