Some days later, when gossip on the subject was subsiding, a fresh scandal revived it.  A literary friend of Mr. Jansenius’s helped him to compose an epitaph, and added to it a couple of pretty and touching stanzas, setting forth that Henrietta’s character had been one of rare sweetness and virtue, and that her friends would never cease to sorrow for her loss.  A tradesman who described himself as a “monumental mason” furnished a book of tomb designs, and Mr. Jansenius selected a highly ornamental one, and proposed to defray half the cost of its erection.  Trefusis objected that the epitaph was untrue, and said that he did not see why tombstones should be privileged to publish false statements.  It was reported that he had followed up his former misconduct by calling his father-in-law a liar, and that he had ordered a common tombstone from some cheap-jack at the East-end.  He had, in fact, spoken contemptuously of the monumental tradesman as an “exploiter” of labor, and had asked a young working mason, a member of the International Association, to design a monument for the gratification of Jansenius.

The mason, with much pains and misgiving, produced an original design.  Trefusis approved of it, and resolved to have it executed by the hands of the designer.  He hired a sculptor’s studio, purchased blocks of marble of the dimensions and quality described to him by the mason, and invited him to set to work forthwith.

Trefusis now encountered a difficulty.  He wished to pay the mason the just value of his work, no more and no less.  But this he could not ascertain.  The only available standard was the market price, and this he rejected as being fixed by competition among capitalists who could only secure profit by obtaining from their workmen more products than they paid them for, and could only tempt customers by offering a share of the unpaid-for part of the products as a reduction in price.  Thus he found that the system of withholding the indispensable materials for production and subsistence from the laborers, except on condition of their supporting an idle class whilst accepting a lower standard of comfort for themselves than for that idle class, rendered the determination of just ratios of exchange, and consequently the practice of honest dealing, impossible.  He had at last to ask the mason what he would consider fair payment for the execution of the design, though he knew that the man could no more solve the problem than he, and that, though he would certainly ask as much as he thought he could get, his demand must be limited by his poverty and by the competition of the monumental tradesman.  Trefusis settled the matter by giving double what was asked, only imposing such conditions as were necessary to compel the mason to execute the work himself, and not make a profit by hiring other men at the market rate of wages to do it.