eyes, that spoke so
much of heaven! Earth was past,--and earthly pain; but so solemn, so
mysterious, was the triumphant brightness of that face, that it
checked even the sobs of sorrow. They pressed around her, in breathless
stillness.

"Eva," said St. Clare, gently.

She did not hear.

"O, Eva, tell us what you see! What is it?" said her father.

A bright, a glorious smile passed over her face, and she said,
brokenly,--"O! love,--joy,--peace!" gave one sigh and passed from death
unto life!

"Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after
thee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. O, woe for them who watched
thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold
gray sky of daily life, and thou gone forever!"

CHAPTER XXVII

"This Is the Last of Earth"*

* "This is the last of Earth! I am content," last words of
John Quincy Adams, uttered February 21, 1848.

The statuettes and pictures in Eva's room were shrouded in white
napkins, and only hushed breathings and muffled footfalls were heard
there, and the light stole in solemnly through windows partially
darkened by closed blinds.

The bed was draped in white; and there, beneath the drooping
angel-figure, lay a little sleeping form,--sleeping never to waken!

There she lay, robed in one of the simple white dresses she had been
wont to wear when living; the rose-colored light through the curtains
cast over the icy coldness of death a warm glow. The heavy eyelashes
drooped softly on the pure cheek; the head was turned a little to
one side, as if in natural steep, but there was diffused over every
lineament of the face that high celestial expression, that mingling of
rapture and repose, which showed it was no earthly or temporary sleep,
but the long, sacred rest which "He giveth to his beloved."

There is no death to such as thou, dear Eva! neither darkness nor shadow
of death; only such a bright fading as when the morning star fades in
the golden dawn. Thine is the victory without the battle,--the crown
without the conflict.

So did St. Clare think, as, with folded arms, he stood there gazing.
Ah! who shall say what he did think? for, from the hour that voices
had said, in the dying chamber, "she is gone," it had been all a dreary
mist, a heavy "dimness of anguish." He had heard voices around him; he
had had questions asked, and answered them; they had asked him when
he would have the funeral, and where