I said that I had had bad news, but that I did not want any spirits, and she said she hoped nothing had happened to any of my family, and I told her not exactly; but in looking back it seemed as if it was almost that way.  I thought I ought to tell her what had happened, for I could see that she was really feeling for me, and so I said:  “Poor Lord Edward is dead.  To be sure, he was very old, and I suppose we had not any right to think he’d live even as long as he did; and as he was nearly blind and had very poor use of his legs it was, perhaps, better that he should go.  But when I think of what friends we used to be before I was married, I can’t help feeling badly to think that he has gone; that when I go back to America he will not show he is glad to see me home again, which he would be if there wasn’t another soul on the whole continent who felt that way.”

Miss Pondar was now standing up with her hands folded in front of her, and her head bowed down as if she was walking behind a hearse with eight ostrich plumes on it.  “Lord Edward,” she said, in a melancholy, respectful voice, “and will his remains be brought to England for interment?”

“Oh, no,” said I, not understanding what she was talking about.  “I am sure he will be buried somewhere near his home, and when I go back his grave will be one of the first places I will visit.”

A streak of bewilderment began to show itself in Miss Pondar’s melancholy respectfulness, and she said:  “Of course, when one lives in foreign parts one may die there, but I always thought in cases like that they were brought home to their family vaults.”

It may seem strange for me to think of anything funny at a time like this, but when Miss Pondar mentioned family vaults when talking of Lord Edward, there came into my mind the jumps he used to make whenever he saw any of us coming home; but I saw what she was driving at and the mistake she had made.  “Oh,” I said, “he was not a member of the British nobility; he was a dog; Lord Edward was his name.  I never loved any animal as I loved him.”

I suppose, madam, that you must sometimes have noticed one of the top candles of a chandelier, when the room gets hot, suddenly bending over and drooping and shedding tears of hot paraffine on the candles below, and perhaps on the table; and if you can remember what that overcome candle looked like, you will have an idea of what Miss Pondar looked like when she found out Lord Edward was a dog.  I think that for one brief moment she hugged to her bosom the fond belief that I was intimate with the aristocracy, and that a noble lord, had he not departed this life, would have been the first to welcome me home, and that she—­she herself—­was in my service.  But the drop was an awful one.  I could see the throes of mortified disappointment in her back, as she leaned over a bed of pinks, pulling out young plants, I am afraid, as well as weeds.  When I looked at her, I was sorry I let her know it was a dog I mourned.  She has tried so hard to make everything all right while we have been here, that she might just as well have gone on thinking that it was a noble earl who died.