Bothwell stood amidst the mourning crowd, with heavily-beating heart. There was no summons from Lady Valeria, and he heard some one near him telling some one else that her grief was terrible--a stony, silent grief, which alarmed her people and her medical attendant. She would see no one. Lady Carlavarock had come all the way from Baden, where the poor dear Earl was doctoring his gout; but Lady Valeria had only consented to see her mother for half an hour, and poor Lady Carlavarock had not even been asked to stay at Fox Hill. She had been obliged to put up at an hotel, which was a cruelty, as everyone knew that the Carlavarocks were as poor as church mice. "Perhaps Lady Valeria has not forgiven her family for having sold her," said the second speaker, in the same confidential voice. "Sold her! Nothing of the kind. She adored the old General." "You had better tell that to--another branch of the service," muttered his friend, as Bothwell moved away from the group. It was past five before the funeral was over, and there was no train for Bodmin till seven; so Bothwell strolled into the coffee-room of the Duke of Cornwall and ordered a cup of tea. While he was drinking it he was joined by a young officer who had been at the funeral, and whom Bothwell had often met at Fox Hill--quite a youth, beardless, and infantine of aspect, but with a keen desire to appear older than his years. He affected to have steeped himself in iniquity, to have dishonoured more husbands and fleeced more tradesmen than any man in the service. He hinted that his father had turned him out of doors, and that his mother had died of a broken heart on his account. He was a youth who loved gossip, and who went about among all the wives and spinsters of Plymouth, the dowagers and old ladies, disseminating tittle-tattle. Hardly anything he said was true, hardly anybody believed him; but people liked to hear him talk all the same. There was a piquancy in slander uttered by those coral lips, which had not long finished with the corals of babyhood. "My dear Bothwell, what a tragedy!" he exclaimed, as he seated himself in front of a brandy-and-soda. "It is a sad loss for every one," Bothwell answered tritely. "Sad loss--but, my dear fellow, what a scandal! Everybody in Plymouth is talking about it. There has been hardly anything else spoken of at any of the dinners I have been at during the last ten days." "I thought old maids' tea-parties were your usual form," retorted Bothwell, with a sneer. "What is your last mare's nest, Falconer? The General's death, or the General's funeral?" "The circumstances that preceded the dear old man's death. That's the scandal. Surely you must have heard----" "Consider that I have been buried among the Cornish moors, and have heard nothing."