‘The sunshine was surely love,’ said Louis, ’making the rainbow of hope on the tears of repentance.  Perhaps it is a blessing vouchsafed to the true of heart to become aware of such a hidden constitutional infirmity in time to wash it out with blessed tears like those.’

‘Hidden,’ said Clara, ’yes, indeed it was, even from herself, because it never showed in manner, like my pride; she was gracious and affable to all the world.  I heard the weeding-women saying, ’she had not one bit of pride,’ and when I told her of it, she shook her head, and laughed sadly, and said that was the kind of thing which had taken her in.’

‘Common parlance is a deceitful thing,’ said Louis, sighing; ’people can’t even be sincere without doing harm!  Well, I had looked to see her made happy by harmony between those two!’

‘She gave up the hope of seeing it,’ said Clara, ’but she looked to it all the same.  She said meekly one day that it might be her penalty to see them at variance in her own lifetime, but over her grave perhaps they would be reconciled, and her prayers be answered.  How she did love Uncle Oliver!  Do you know, Louis, what she was to him showed me what the mother’s love must be, which we never missed, because—­because we had her!’

‘Don’t talk of it, Clara,’ said Louis, hastily; ’we cannot dwell on ourselves, and bear it patiently!’

It was truly the loss of a most tender mother to them both; bringing for the first time the sense of orphanhood on the girl, left between the uncongenial though doting uncle, and the irritable though affectionate brother; and Louis, though his home was not broken up, suffered scarcely less.  His aunt’s playful sweetness had peculiarly accorded with his disposition, and the affection and confidence of his fond, clinging nature had fastened themselves upon her, all the more in the absence of his own Mary.  Each loss seemed to make the other more painful.  Aunt Kitty’s correspondence was another link cut away between him and Peru, and he had never known such a sense of dreariness in his whole life.  Clara was going patiently and quietly through those trying days, with womanly considerateness; believing herself supported by her brother, and being so in fact by the mere sisterly gratification of his presence, though she was far more really sustained and assisted by Fitzjocelyn.  How much happier was the sorrow of Louis and Clara than that of James or Oliver!  Tempers such as those in which the uncle and nephew but too closely resembled each other were soured, not softened by grief, and every arrangement raised discussions which did not tend to bring them nearer together.

Oliver designed a stately funeral.  Nothing was too much for him to lavish on his mother, and he was profuse in orders for hangings, velvet, blazonry, mutes, and hired mourners, greedy of offers of the dreary state of empty carriages, demanding that of Lord Ormersfield, and wanting James to write to Lady Conway for the same purpose.