The heavy days went slowly by, and that on which the mortal remains of May Forestfield were to be laid in their last resting-place had come. Her death had been much talked of and the sentiments of 'society' on the subject were various. After the nine days' wonder of her restoration to her husband's house had died away, Lady Forestfield had been suffered to fall into general oblivion. That circumstance was, of course, much discussed, and many persons were of Mrs. Hamblin's way of thinking. Those persons were chiefly among the large numbers of the sinners who have not been found out. Sinners who have been found out are, as a rule, more charitable, and the _divorcées_ who hover longingly on the confines of the world in which they once played a part, and who are perfectly cognisant of the peccadilloes of the women who, from their own vantage ground of deferred or escaped exposure, 'cut' them, while they eagerly devour every atom of gossip concerning the new 'milieu' in which their quondam but detected associates live, were unfeignedly glad of May Forestfield's 'luck.' _They_ knew what detection and its penalties meant, and they would not wish any one such 'hard lines.' The undetected were scandalised. They even thought it very wrong that Lord Forestfield should have been permitted to sully his 'order' by such an act of misdirected clemency, and a lady who had been much and deservedly 'talked of' with poor May's husband was particularly denunciatory of the evil example and the dangerous precedent. She found consolation only in assuring herself and others that a restoration of that kind 'meant very little after all,' though of course Lady Forestfield would be 'kept out of mischief by being under her husband's roof;' she would be just as much 'out of society' as if she were not there. All this had concerned May not at all; indeed she hardly knew or even guessed how any one talked about her, and never turned her thoughts or her eyes back upon that 'world' which she had suspected to be a fool's paradise before she had forfeited it. Very much the same sort of comment was made upon her death; perhaps it was not in any instance so bitter as that which had attended her disgrace. Mrs. Hamblin regarded the event as a very good thing indeed for Lord Forestfield, quite a relief, and spoke of it in a tone which implied that she considered it the proper thing on the part of Providence to reward him for his unheard-of generosity by interposing to prevent his reaping its possibly unpleasant consequences. Mrs. Hamblin was also 'quite thankful' that the future Lady Uffington would not be exposed to the risks of association with 'such a person as Lady Forestfield,' and she added, while discussing the subject with a man newly _lancé_, who was _en train_ to become the successor in her good graces of Spiridion Pratt--'resigned'--that of course those risks would have been doubled by the moral obtuseness of Sir Nugent