so
strongly into earth as to defy that Woodman who pins his faith to
shaking blasts at first, but when he finds that windfalls will not serve
his turn, and that although leaves decay, and branches are swept away,
and the very bark is stripped off, the tree dies not, takes heart of
grace, and lays about him with his Axe. Then one blow with the sharp
suffices. So for many months Death seemed to let her be, as though he
sat down quietly by her side, nursing his bony chin, and saying, "She is
very old and weak; yet a little, and she must surely be mine." Mistress
Talmash appeared to me, in the fantastic imagination of a solitary
childhood, to take such a part, and play it to the Very Death; and there
were sidelong glances from her eyes, and pressures of her lips, and a
thrusting forth of her hands when the cordial or the potion was to be
given, that seemed to murmur, "Still does she Tarry, and still do I
Wait." This gentlewoman was never hard or impatient with my Grandmother;
but towards the closing scene, for all the outward deference she
observed towards her, 'twas she who commanded, and the Unknown Lady who
obeyed. Nor did I fail to mark that her bearing was towards me fuller of
a kind of stern authority than she had of aforetime presumed to show,
and that she seemed to be waiting for me too, that she might work her
will upon me.

The ecclesiastic Father Ruddlestone was daily, and for many hours,
closeted with my kinswoman and benefactress; and I often, when admitted
to her presence after one of these parleys, found her much dejected, and
in Tears. He had always maintained a ghostly sway over her, and was in
these latter days stern with her almost to harshness. And although I
have ever disdained eavesdropping and couching in covert places to hear
the foregatherings of my betters (which some honourable persons in the
world's reckoning scorn not to do), it was by Chance, and not by Design,
that, playing one wintry day in the Withdrawing-room adjoining the
closet where my Grandmother still sat among her relics, I heard high
words--high, at least, as they affected one person, for the lady's rose
not above a mild complaint; and Father Ruddlestone coming out, said in
an angry tone:

"My uncle saved the King's life when he was in the Oak, and his soul
when he was at Whitehall; and I will do his bidding by you now."

"The Lord's will be done, not mine," my Grandmother said meekly.

Then Father Ruddlestone passed into the Wit