the brewer's carriage awaiting her on
shore, did the lady give a natural course to her grief; well knowing that
her Silva would attribute it to the darkness of their common exile. She
wept: but in the excess of her misery, two words of strangely opposite
signification, pronounced by Mr. Goren; two words that were at once
poison and antidote, sang in her brain; two words that painted her dead
father from head to foot, his nature and his fortune: these were the
Shop, and the Uniform.

Oh! what would she not have given to have-seen and bestowed on her
beloved father one last kiss! Oh! how she hoped that her inspired echo of
Uniform, on board the Jocasta, had drowned the memory, eclipsed the
meaning, of that fatal utterance of Shop!

CHAPTER V

THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL

It was the evening of the second day since the arrival of the black
letter in London from Lymport, and the wife of the brewer and the wife of
the Major sat dropping tears into one another's laps, in expectation of
their sister the Countess. Mr. Andrew Cogglesby had not yet returned from
his office. The gallant Major had gone forth to dine with General Sir
George Frebuter, the head of the Marines of his time. It would have been
difficult for the Major, he informed his wife, to send in an excuse to
the General for non-attendance, without entering into particulars; and
that he should tell the General he could not dine with him, because of
the sudden decease of a tailor, was, as he let his wife understand, and
requested her to perceive, quite out of the question. So he dressed
himself carefully, and though peremptory with his wife concerning his
linen, and requiring natural services from her in the button department,
and a casual expression of contentment as to his ultimate make-up, he
left her that day without any final injunctions to occupy her mind, and
she was at liberty to weep if she pleased, a privilege she did not enjoy
undisturbed when he was present; for the warrior hated that weakness, and
did not care to hide his contempt for it.

Of the three sisters, the wife of the Major was, oddly enough, the one
who was least inveterately solicitous of concealing the fact of her
parentage. Reticence, of course, she had to study with the rest; the
Major was a walking book of reticence and the observances; he professed,
also, in company with herself alone, to have had much trouble in drilling
her to mark and properly preserve them. She had no desire