half-past nine o'clock, and immediately telegraphed to London, was
announced by a second edition of the _Times_ to the country.
Consternation and deep grief fell upon all men. One week later, the
remains arrived from Welbeck at Harcourt House, to be entombed in the
family vault of the Bentincks, that is to be found in a small building
in a dingy street, now a chapel of ease, but in old days the Parish
Church among the fields of the pretty village of Marylebone.

"The day of the interment was dark and cold, and drizzling. Although the
last offices were performed in the most scrupulously private manner, the
feelings of the community could not be repressed. From nine till eleven
o'clock that day all the British shipping in the docks and the river,
from London Bridge to Gravesend, hoisted their flags half-mast high, and
minute guns were fired from appointed stations along the Thames. The
same mournful ceremony was observed in all the ports of England and
Ireland; and not only in these, for the flag was half-mast high on every
British ship at Antwerp, at Rotterdam, at Havre.

"Ere the last minute gun sounded all was over. Followed to his tomb by
those brothers who, if not consoled, might at this moment be sustained
by the remembrance that to him they had ever been brothers, not only in
name but in spirit, the vault at length closed on the mortal remains of
George Bentinck."

Such was the conventional view which Society took of the sad
circumstances of Lord George's death.

The old Duke was over eighty years of age and too infirm to attend the
funeral, but the Marquis of Titchfield and Lord Henry Bentinck were
present.