. 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 foll