“I don’t forget anything,” retorted Agnes, becoming scornfully serious.  “Not even that you count on me to settle your wretched financial difficulties out of poor Hubert’s money.”

“Of course you will, my dear.  You are a Lambert.”

“Undoubtedly; but I am not necessarily a fool.”

“Oh, I can’t stop and hear you call yourself such a name,” said Garvington, ostentatiously dense to her true meaning.  “It is hysteria that speaks, and not my dear sister.  Very natural when you are so grieved.  We are all mortal.”

“You are certainly silly in addition,” replied the widow, who knew how useless it was to argue with the man.  “Go away and don’t worry me.  When poor Hubert is buried, and the will is read, I shall announce my intentions.”

“Intentions!  Intentions!” muttered the corpulent little lord, taking a hasty departure out of diplomacy.  “Surely, Agnes won’t be such a fool as to let the family estates go.”

It never struck him that Pine might have so worded the will that the inheritance he counted upon might not come to the widow, unless she chose to fulfil a certain condition.  But then he never guessed the jealousy with which the hot-blooded gypsy had regarded the early engagement of Agnes and Lambert.  If he had done so, he assuredly would not have invited the young man down to the funeral.  But he did so, and talked about doing so, with a frequent mention that the body was to rest in the sacred vault of the Lamberts so that every one should applaud his generous humility.

“Poor Pine was only a gypsy,” said Garvington, on all and every occasion.  “But I esteemed him as a good and honest man.  He shall have every honor shown to his memory.  Noel and I, as representatives of his wife, my dear sister, shall follow him to the Lambert vault, and there, with my ancestors, the body of this honorable, though humble, man shall rest until the Day of Judgment.”

A cynic in London laughed when the speech was reported to him.  “If Garvington is buried in the same vault,” he said contemptuously, “he will ask Pine for money, as soon as they rise to attend the Great Assizes!” which bitter remark showed that the little man could not induce people to believe him so disinterested as he should have liked them to consider him.

However, in pursuance of this artful policy, he certainly gave the dead man, what the landlady of the village inn called, “a dressy funeral.”  All that could be done in the way of pomp and ceremony was done, and the procession which followed Ishmael Hearne to the grave was an extraordinarily long one.  The villagers came because, like all the lower orders, they loved the excitement of an interment; the gypsies from the camp followed, since the deceased was of their blood; and many people in financial and social circles came down from London for the obvious reason that Pine was a well-known figure in the City and the West End, and also a member of Parliament.  As for Lambert, he put in an appearance, in response to his cousin’s invitation, unwillingly enough, but in order to convince Agnes that he had every desire to obey her commands.  People could scarcely think that Pine had been jealous of the early engagement to Agnes, when her former lover attended the funeral of a successful rival.