g attitude. Dressed, as I told you
before, in her virgin white. She was sitting in her elbow-chair, Mrs.
Lovick close by her, in another chair, with her left arm round her neck,
supporting it, as it were; for, it seems, the lady had bid her do so,
saying, she had been a mother to her, and she would delight herself in
thinking she was in her mamma's arms; for she found herself drowsy;
perhaps, she said, for the last time she should be so.

One faded cheek rested upon the good woman's bosom, the kindly warmth of
which had overspread it with a faint, but charming flush; the other paler
and hollow, as if already iced over by death. Her hands white as the
lily, with her meandering veins more transparently blue than ever I had
seen even her's, (veins so soon, alas! to be choked up by the congealment
of that purple stream, which already so languidly creeps, rather than
flows, through them!) her hands hanging lifelessly, one before her, the
other grasped by the right-hand of the kind widow, whose tears bedewed
the sweet face which her motherly boson supported, though unfelt by the
fair sleeper; and either insensibly to the good woman, or what she would
not disturb her to wipe off, or to change her posture: her aspect was
sweetly calm and serene: and though she started now and then, yet her
sleep seemed easy; her breath, indeed short and quick; but tolerably
free, and not like that of a dying person.

In this heart-moving attitude she appeared to us when we approached her,
and came to have her lovely face before us.

The Colonel, sighing often, gazed upon her with his arms folded, and with
the most profound and affectionate attention; till at last, on her
starting, and fetching her breath with greater difficulty than before, he
retired to a screen, that was drawn before her house, as she calls it,
which, as I have heretofore observed, stands under one of the windows.
This screen was placed there at the time she found herself obliged to
take to her chamber; and in the depth of our concern, and the fulness of
other discourse at our first interview, I had forgotten to apprize the
Colonel of what he would probably see.

Retiring thither, he drew out his handkerchief, and, overwhelmed with
grief, seemed unable to speak; but, on casting his eye behind the screen,
he soon broke silence; for, struck with the shape of the coffin, he
lifted up a purplish-coloured cloth that was spread over it, and,
starting back, Good God! said he,