and handsome young baronet, and the serious illness of his poor
wife. The funeral oration of the Rev. Mr. Knight, rector of St. Gosport,
from the words, "In the midst of life we are in death," was most
eloquent and impressive; and women with tender hearts shed tears, and
men listened with grave, sad faces. It was such a little while, only
five short months, since the wedding-bells had rung, and there had been
bonfires and feasting throughout the village; and Sir Noel, looking so
proud and so happy, had driven up to the illuminated hall with his
handsome bride. Only five months; and now--and now.

The funeral was over, and everybody had gone back home--everybody but
the Rev. Horace Thetford, who lingered to see the result of my lady's
illness, and if she died, to take possession of his estate. It was
unutterably dismal in the dark, hushed old house with Sir Noel's ghost
seeming to haunt every room--very dismal and ghastly this waiting to
step into dead people's shoes. But then there was fifteen thousand a
year, and the finest place in Devonshire; and the Rev. Horace would have
faced a whole regiment of ghosts, and lived in a vault for that.

But Lady Thetford did not die. Slowly but surely, the fever that had
worn her to a shadow left her; and, by and by, when the early primroses
peeped through the frost blackened earth, she was able to come down
stairs--to come down feeble and frail and weak, colorless as death,
almost as silent and cold.

The Rev. Horace went back to Yorkshire, yet not entirely in despair.
Female heirs could not inherit Thetford--he stood a chance yet; and the
pale young widow was left alone in the dreary old mansion. People were
very sorry for her, and came to see her, and begged her to be resigned
to her great loss; and Mr. Knight preached endless homilies on patience,
and hope, and submission, and Lady Thetford listened to them just as if
they had been talking Greek. She never spoke of her dead husband--she
shivered at the mention of his name; but that night at his dying bed had
changed her as never woman changed before. From a bright, ambitious,
pleasure-loving girl, she had grown into a silent, haggard, hopeless
woman. All the sunny spring days she sat by the window of her boudoir,
gazing at the misty, boundless sea, pale and mute--dead in life.

The friends who came to see her, and Mr. Knight, the rector, were a
little puzzled by this abnormal case, but very sorry for the mournful
young widow,