The grand funeral which Mrs. Cameron once had planned for Katy was a reality at last, but the breathless form lying so cold and still in the darkened rooms at No. ---- Fifth Avenue was not Katy's, but that of a soldier embalmed--an only son brought back to his father's house amid sadness and tears. They had taken him there rather than to his own house, because it was the wish of his mother, who, however hard and selfish she might be to others, had loved and idolized her son, mourning for him truly, and forgetting in her grief to care how grand the funeral was, and feeling only a passing twinge when told that Mrs. Lennox had come from Silverton to pay the last tribute of respect to her late son-in-law. Some little comfort it was to have her boy lauded as a faithful soldier and to hear the commendations lavished upon him during the time he lay in state, with his uniform around him; but when the whole was over, and in the gray of the wintry afternoon her husband returned from burying his son, there came over her a feeling of such desolation as she had never known--a feeling which drove her at last to the little room upstairs, where sat a lonely man, his head bowed upon his hands, and his tears dropping silently upon the hearthstone as he, too, thought of the vacant parlor below and the new-made grave at Greenwood.
"Oh, husband, comfort me, for our only boy is dead," fell from her lips as she tottered to her husband, who opened his arms to receive her, forgetting all the years which had made her the cold, proud woman, who needed no sympathy, and remembering only that bright, green summer when she was first his bride, and came to him for comfort in every little grievance, just as now she came in this great, crushing sorrow.
He did not tell her she was reaping what she had sown, that but for her pride and deception concerning Genevra, Wilford might never have gone to the war, or they been without a son. He did not reproach her at all, but soothed her tenderly, calling her even by her maiden name, and awkwardly smoothing her hair, silvered now with gray, feeling for a moment that Wilford had not died in vain, if by his dying he gave back to his father the wife so lost during the many years since fashion and folly had been the idols she worshiped. But the habits of years could not be lightly broken, and Mrs. Cameron's mind soon became absorbed in the richness of her mourning, and the strict etiquette of her mourning days. To Katy she was very kind, caressing her with unwonted affection, and scarcely suffering her to leave her sight, much less to stay even for a day at Mrs. Banker's, where Katy secretly preferred to be. Of Genevra, too, she talked with Katy, and at her instigation wrote a friendly letter, thanking Miss Lambert for all her kindness to her son, expressing her sorrow that she had ever been so unjust to her, and sending her a handsome locket, containing on one side a lock of Wilford's hair, and on the other his picture, taken from a large-sized photograph. Mrs. Cameron felt herself a very good woman after she had done all this, together with receiving Mrs. Lennox at her own house, and entertaining her for one whole day; but at heart there was no real change, and as time passed on she gradually fell back into her old ways of thinking, and went no more for comfort to her husband as she had on that first night after the burial.