now, has kept me from caring or asserting myself in any
way. I feel numb. I seem to be a person listening from some gallery
when they all speak around me, and that the Ambrosine who answers
placidly is an automaton who moves by clockwork.

Shall I ever wake again? I sit night after night in my mother-in-law's
"budwar," the crimson-satin chairs staring at me, the wedding-cake
ornament with its silver leaves glittering in the electric light; I
sit there listening vaguely to her admonitions and endless prattle
of Augustus's perfections. I have now heard every incident of his
childhood: what ailments he had, what medicines suited him best, when
he cut all those superfluous teeth of his.

One little trait appears to have been considered a sign of great
astuteness and infantine perception. His fond parents--the late Mr.
Gurrage was alive then--gave him a new threepenny bit each week to
give to a barrel-organ man who played before the house at Bournemouth.
Augustus at the age of two invariably changed it on the stairs with
the butler for two pennies and two halfpennies, keeping one penny
halfpenny for himself.

"Me dear"--my mother-in-law always completes this story with this
sentence--"Mr. Gurrage said to me, 'Mark my word, Mary Jane, the boy
will get on!'"

In the class of my _belle famille_, mourning is fortunately a matter
of such importance that the wearing of crepe for grandmamma has been
allowed to be sufficient reason for abandoning the wedding rejoicings.

Dear grandmamma! it would please you to know your death had done me
even this service. I am encouraged to grieve, especially in public.
Mrs. Gurrage herself put on black, and her face beamed all over with
enjoyable tears the first Sunday we rustled into the family pew stiff
with crepe and hangings of woe. They gave grandmamma what Miss Hoad--I
mean Amelia--called a "proper funeral."

And so all is done--even the Marquis has gone back to France, and only
Roy is left.

There is something in his brown eyes of sympathy which I cannot bear;
the lump keeps coming in my throat. Kind dog, you are my friend.

Next week Lady Tilchester will have returned to Harley, and soon
Augustus and I are to go and pay a three days' visit there.

Once what joy this thought would have caused me--I was going to say
when I was young!--I shall be twenty next October, but I feel as if
I must be at least fifty years old.

Augustus is not a gay companion. He has a sulky temper; he is