ich held her, now the pious nun, then the beauty and presider
over the tournament and galliard. In her arms the spirit of the hermit
passed away. She survived but a few hours, and left conjecture busy with
a history to which it never obtained further clew. Many a troubadour in
later times furnished forth in poetry the details which truth refused to
supply; and the place where the hermit at sunrise and sunset ever came
to gaze upon the convent became consecrated by song."

The place invested with this legendary interest was impressed with a
singular aspect of melancholy quiet; wildflowers yet lingered on the
turf, whose grassy sedges gently overhung the Neckar, that murmured
amidst them with a plaintive music. Not a wind stirred the trees; but at
a little distance from the place, the spire of a church rose amidst the
copse; and, as they paused, they suddenly heard from the holy building
the bell that summons to the burial of the dead. It came on the ear in
such harmony with the spot, with the hour, with the breathing calm, that
it thrilled to the heart of each with an inexpressible power. It was
like the voice of another world, that amidst the solitude of nature
summoned the lulled spirit from the cares of this; it invited, not
repulsed, and had in its tone more of softness than of awe.

Gertrude turned, with tears starting to her eyes, and, laying her hand
on Trevylyan's, whispered, "In such a spot, so calm, so sequestered, yet
in the neighbourhood of the house of God, would I wish this broken frame
to be consigned to rest."

CHAPTER THE LAST. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS TALE.

FROM that day Gertrude's spirit resumed its wonted cheerfulness, and for
the ensuing week she never reverted to her approaching fate; she seemed
once more to have grown unconscious of its limit. Perhaps she sought,
anxious for Trevylyan to the last, not to throw additional gloom over
their earthly separation; or, perhaps, once steadily regarding the
certainty of her doom, its terrors vanished. The chords of thought,
vibrating to the subtlest emotions, may be changed by a single incident,
or in a single hour; a sound of sacred music, a green and quiet
burial-place, may convert the form of death into the aspect of an angel.
And therefore wisely, and with a beautiful lore, did the Greeks strip
the grave of its unreal gloom; wisely did they body forth the great
principle of Rest by solemn and lovely images, unconscious of the
northern madness that