ir, of complete misery, and a patient sufferance of it, which is far
more touching than any of the insane ravings or wild gesticulation of
untamed sorrow. I desired to draw her from this spot; but she opposed my
wish. That class of persons whose imagination and sensibility have never
been taken out of the narrow circle immediately in view, if they possess
these qualities to any extent, are apt to pour their influence into the
very realities which appear to destroy them, and to cling to these with
double tenacity from not being able to comprehend any thing beyond. Thus
Lucy, in desert England, in a dead world, wished to fulfil the usual
ceremonies of the dead, such as were customary to the English country
people, when death was a rare visitant, and gave us time to receive his
dreaded usurpation with pomp and circumstance--going forth in procession
to deliver the keys of the tomb into his conquering hand. She had already,
alone as she was, accomplished some of these, and the work on which I found
her employed, was her mother's shroud. My heart sickened at such detail of
woe, which a female can endure, but which is more painful to the masculine
spirit than deadliest struggle, or throes of unutterable but transient
agony.

This must not be, I told her; and then, as further inducement, I
communicated to her my recent loss, and gave her the idea that she must
come with me to take charge of the orphan children, whom the death of Idris
had deprived of a mother's care. Lucy never resisted the call of a duty, so
she yielded, and closing the casements and doors with care, she accompanied
me back to Windsor. As we went she communicated to me the occasion of her
mother's death. Either by some mischance she had got sight of Lucy's letter
to Idris, or she had overheard her conversation with the countryman who
bore it; however it might be, she obtained a knowledge of the appalling
situation of herself and her daughter, her aged frame could not sustain the
anxiety and horror this discovery instilled--she concealed her knowledge
from Lucy, but brooded over it through sleepless nights, till fever and
delirium, swift forerunners of death, disclosed the secret. Her life, which
had long been hovering on its extinction, now yielded at once to the united
effects of misery and sickness, and that same morning she had died.

After the tumultuous emotions of the day, I was glad to find on my arrival
at the inn that my companions had retired to rest