I pass over all the details of polite "shock," affected sorrow, and feigned sympathy of society at my wife's sudden death. No one was really grieved about it,--men raised their eyebrows, shrugged their shoulders, lit extra cigarettes and dismissed the subject as too unpleasant and depressing to dwell upon,--women were glad of the removal of a too beautiful and too much admired rival, and the majority of fashionable folk delighted in having something "thrilling" to talk about in the tragic circumstances of her end. As a rule, people are seldom or never unselfish enough to be honestly sorry for the evanishment of some leading or brilliant figure from their midst,--the vacancy leaves room for the pushing in of smaller fry. Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive. To be missed at all when you die, some one must love you very deeply and unselfishly; and deep unselfish love is rarer to find among mortals than a pearl in a dust-bin. Thanks to my abundance of cash, everything concerning Sibyl's suicide was admirably managed. In consideration of her social position as an Earl's daughter, two doctors certified (on my paying them very handsome fees) that hers was a 'death by misadventure,'--namely, through taking an accidental overdose of a powerful sleeping draught. It was the best report to make,--and the most respectable. It gave the penny press an opportunity of moralizing on the dangers that lurked in sleeping draughts generally,--and Tom, Dick, and Harry all wrote letters to their favorite periodicals (signing their names in full) giving _their_ opinions as to the nature of sleeping draughts, so that for a week at least the ordinary dullness of the newspapers was quite enlivened by ungrammatical _gratis_ 'copy.' The conventionalities of law, decency and order were throughout scrupulously observed and complied with,--everybody was paid (which was the chief thing), and everybody was, I believe, satisfied with what they managed to make out of the death-payment. The funeral gave joy to the souls of all undertakers,--it was so expensive and impressive. The florist's trade gained something of an impetus by the innumerable orders received for wreaths and crosses made of the costliest flowers. When the coffin was carried to the grave, it could not be seen for the load of blossoms that covered it. And amid all the cards and 'loving tokens' and 'farewell dearests' and 'not-lost-but-gone-befores'--that ticketed the white masses of lilies, gardenias and roses which were supposed to symbolize the innocence and sweetness of the poisoned corpse they were sent to adorn, there was not one honest regret,--not one unfeigned expression of true sorrow. Lord Elton made a sufficiently striking figure of dignified parental woe, but