KERAY.

For some time after the fatal accident which deprived her of her
husband, Mrs. Bluebeard was, as may be imagined, in a state of profound
grief.

There was not a widow in all the country who went to such an expense for
black bombazine. She had her beautiful hair confined in crimped caps,
and her weepers came over her elbows. Of course, she saw no company
except her sister Anne (whose company was anything but pleasant to the
widow); as for her brothers, their odious mess-table manners had always
been disagreeable to her. What did she care for jokes about the major,
or scandal concerning the Scotch surgeon of the regiment? If they drank
their wine out of black bottles or crystal, what did it matter to her?
Their stories of the stable, the parade, and the last run with the
hounds, were perfectly odious to her; besides, she could not bear their
impertinent mustachios, and filthy habit of smoking cigars.

They were always wild, vulgar young men, at the best; but now,--_now_,
O, their presence to her delicate soul was horror! How could she bear to
look on them after what had occurred? She thought of the best of
husbands ruthlessly cut down by their cruel, heavy, cavalry sabres; the
kind friend, the generous landlord, the spotless justice of peace, in
whose family differences these rude cornets of dragoons had dared to
interfere, whose venerable blue hairs they had dragged down with sorrow
to the grave.

She put up a most splendid monument to her departed lord over the family
vault of the Bluebeards. The rector, Dr. Sly, who had been Mr.
Bluebeard's tutor at college, wrote an epitaph in the most pompous yet
pathetic Latin: "Siste, viator! moerens conjux, heu! quanto minus est
cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse"; in a word, everything that is
usually said in epitaphs. A bust of the departed saint, with Virtue
mourning over it, stood over the epitaph, surrounded by medallions of
his wives, and one of these medallions had as yet no name in it, nor
(the epitaph said) could the widow ever be consoled until her own name
was inscribed there. "For then I shall be with him. In coelo quies,"
she would say, throwing up her fine eyes to heaven, and quoting the
enormous words of the hatchment which was put up in the church, and over
Bluebeard's hall, where the butler, the housekeeper, the footman, the
housemaid, and scullions were all in the profoundest mourning. The
keeper went out to shoot birds in a crape band; nay, th