pened and the priest
reappeared with that mysterious covered something in his hands. Ann
Eliza had risen, drawing back as he passed. He had doubtless divined her
antipathy, for he had hitherto only bowed in going in and out; but to
day he paused and looked at her compassionately.

"I have left your sister in a very beautiful state of mind," he said in
a low voice like a woman's. "She is full of spiritual consolation."

Ann Eliza was silent, and he bowed and went out. She hastened back to
Evelina's bed, and knelt down beside it. Evelina's eyes were very
large and bright; she turned them on Ann Eliza with a look of inner
illumination.

"I shall see the baby," she said; then her eyelids fell and she dozed.

The doctor came again at nightfall, administering some last palliatives;
and after he had gone Ann Eliza, refusing to have her vigil shared by
Miss Mellins or Mrs. Hawkins, sat down to keep watch alone.

It was a very quiet night. Evelina never spoke or opened her eyes,
but in the still hour before dawn Ann Eliza saw that the restless hand
outside the bed-clothes had stopped its twitching. She stooped over and
felt no breath on her sister's lips.

The funeral took place three days later. Evelina was buried in
Calvary Cemetery, the priest assuming the whole care of the necessary
arrangements, while Ann Eliza, a passive spectator, beheld with stony
indifference this last negation of her past.

A week afterward she stood in her bonnet and mantle in the doorway of
the little shop. Its whole aspect had changed. Counter and shelves were
bare, the window was stripped of its familiar miscellany of artificial
flowers, note-paper, wire hat-frames, and limp garments from the dyer's;
and against the glass pane of the doorway hung a sign: "This store to
let."

Ann Eliza turned her eyes from the sign as she went out and locked the
door behind her. Evelina's funeral had been very expensive, and Ann
Eliza, having sold her stock-in-trade and the few articles of furniture
that remained to her, was leaving the shop for the last time. She had
not been able to buy any mourning, but Miss Mellins had sewed some crape
on her old black mantle and bonnet, and having no gloves she slipped her
bare hands under the folds of the mantle.

It was a beautiful morning, and the air was full of a warm sunshine that
had coaxed open nearly every window in the street, and summoned to the
window-sills the sickly plants nurtured indoors in winter.