his day with Matilda's death. They
had first wondered, and then wept, when they heard of it at a distance:
and now, when once more on the spot where they had seen her daily, and
had hourly criticised her looks, her sayings, and doings, they were
under a strong sense of the meanness and frivolity of their talk, and
the unkindness of their feelings about one whose faults could hardly be
called her own, and who might now, they supposed, be living and moving
in scenes and amidst circumstances whose solemnity and importance put to
shame the petty intercourse they had carried on with her here. Both
resolved in their hearts that if Anna Rowland should praise her own
dancing, and flatten her back before she spoke, and talk often of the
time when she should be married, they would let it all pass, and not
tell mamma or Sophia, or exchange satirical looks with each other. They
remembered now that Matilda had done good and kind things, which had
been disregarded at the time when they were bent on ridiculing her. It
was just hereabouts that she took off her worsted gloves, one bitter day
in the winter, and put them on the hands of her little brother who was
crying with cold; and it was by yonder corner that she directed a
stranger gentleman into the right road so prettily that he looked after
her as she walked away, and said she would be the pride of the place
some day. Alas! there she lay--in the vault under the church; and she
would be no one's pride in this world, except in her poor mother's
heart.

"There is somebody not in mourning," cried Fanny; "the very first,
besides my cousins, that we have seen to-day. Oh, it is Mrs James!
Shall we not speak to her?"

Mrs James seemed warmed out of her usual indifference. She shook hands
almost affectionately with Sophia. The meeting of acquaintances who
find themselves alive after a pestilence is unlike any other kind of
meeting: it animates the most indifferent, and almost makes friends of
enemies. While Mrs James and Sophia were making mutual inquiries, Mary
called Fanny's attention to what was to be seen opposite. There was a
glittering row of large, freshly-gilt letters--"Miskin, late Howell,
Haberdasher, etcetera." Miss Miskin, in the deepest mourning, with a
countenance trained to melancholy, was peeping through the ribbons and
handkerchiefs which veiled her window, to see whether the Miss Greys
were on their way to her or not. Sophia would not have been able to
resis