way, and I am glad for his sake. But when I am gone and
I shan't feel ashamed at his knowing it--please give him my Bible; and
you may, if you like, put a piece of my hair in that last chapter you
have been reading to-night."

"Phoebe, my Phoebe, listen," said Catharine: "I shall never be Tom's
wife."

"Are you sure?"

"As sure as that I am here with my head on your pillow."

"I am sorry."

She then became silent, and so continued for two hours. Catharine
thought she was asleep, but a little after dawn her mother came into the
room. She knew better, and saw that the silence was not sleep, but the
insensibility of death. In a few minutes she hurried Catharine
downstairs, and when she was again admitted Phoebe lay dead, and her pale
face, unutterably peaceful and serious, was bound up with a white
neckerchief. The soul of the poor servant girl had passed away--only a
servant girl--and yet there was something in that soul equal to the sun
whose morning rays were pouring through the window. She lies at the back
of the meeting-house amongst her kindred, and a little mound was raised
over her. Her father borrowed the key of the gate every now and then,
and, after his work was over, cut the grass where his child lay, and
prevented the weeds from encroaching; but when he died, not long after,
his wife had to go into the workhouse, and in one season the sorrel and
dandelions took possession, and Phoebe's grave became like all the
others--a scarcely distinguishable undulation in the tall, rank herbage.

CHAPTER XIX

Catharine left the cottage that afternoon, and began to walk home to
Eastthorpe. She thought, as she went along, of Phoebe's confession. She
had loved Tom, but had reached the point of perfect acquiescence in any
award of destiny, provided only he could be happy. She had faced
sickness and death without a murmur; she had no theory of duty, no
philosophy, no religion, as it is usually called, save a few dim
traditional beliefs, and she was the daughter of common peasants; but she
had attained just the one thing essential which religion and philosophy
ought to help us to obtain, and, if they do not help us to obtain it,
they are nothing. She lived not for herself, nor in herself, and it was
not even justice to herself which she demanded. She had not become what
she was because death was before her. Death and the prospect of death do
not work any change. Catharine called to mind Phoebe's pas