day that her father-in-law was made a Marquess. He deserved his honours.
The four votes he had inherited in the House of Commons had been
increased, by his intense volition and unsparing means, to ten; and the
very day he was raised to his Marquisate, he commenced sapping fresh
corporations, and was working for the strawberry leaf. His honours were
proclaimed in the London Gazette, and her decease was not even noticed in
the County Chronicle; but the altars of Nemesis are beneath every outraged
roof, and the death of this unhappy lady, apparently without an earthly
friend or an earthly hope, desolate and deserted, and dying in obscure
poverty, was not forgotten.

Coningsby was not more than nine years of age when he lost his last
parent; and he had then been separated from her for nearly three years.
But he remembered the sweetness of his nursery days. His mother, too, had
written to him frequently since he quitted her, and her fond expressions
had cherished the tenderness of his heart. He wept bitterly when his
schoolmaster broke to him the news of his mother's death. True it was they
had been long parted, and their prospect of again meeting was vague and
dim; but his mother seemed to him his only link to human society. It was
something to have a mother, even if he never saw her. Other boys went to
see their mothers! he, at least, could talk of his. Now he was alone. His
grandfather was to him only a name. Lord Monmouth resided almost
constantly abroad, and during his rare visits to England had found no time
or inclination to see the orphan, with whom he felt no sympathy. Even the
death of the boy's mother, and the consequent arrangements, were notified
to his master by a stranger. The letter which brought the sad intelligence
was from Mr. Rigby. It was the first time that name had been known to
Coningsby.

Mr. Rigby was member for one of Lord Monmouth's boroughs. He was the