obbing. She listened, and hearing the sounds
frequently repeated, she entered the room, which, but for her candle,
would have been quite dark, and there she found Lord Cadurcis kneeling
and weeping by his mother's bedside. He seemed annoyed at being seen
and disturbed, but his spirit was too broken to murmur. 'La! my lord,'
said Mistress Pauncefort, 'you must not take on so; you must not
indeed. I am sure this dark room is enough to put any one in low
spirits. Now do go downstairs, and sit with my lady and the Doctor,
and try to be cheerful; that is a dear good young gentleman. I wish
Miss Venetia were here, and then she would amuse you. But you must not
take on, because there is no use in it. You must exert yourself, for
what is done cannot be undone; and, as the Doctor told us last Sunday,
we must all die; and well for those who die with a good conscience;
and I am sure the poor dear lady that is gone must have had a good
conscience, because she had a good heart, and I never heard any one
say the contrary. Now do exert yourself, my dear lord, and try to be
cheerful, do; for there is nothing like a little exertion in these
cases, for God's will must be done, and it is not for us to say yea or
nay, and taking on is a murmuring against God's providence.' And so
Mistress Pauncefort would have continued urging the usual topics of
coarse and common-place consolation; but Cadurcis only answered with a
sigh that came from the bottom of his heart, and said with streaming
eyes, 'Ah! Mrs. Pauncefort, God had only given me one friend in this
world, and there she lies.'

CHAPTER XVIII.

The first conviction that there is death in the house is perhaps the
most awful moment of youth. When we are young, we think that not only
ourselves, but that all about us, are immortal. Until the arrow has
struck a victim round our own hearth, death is merely an unmeaning
word; until then, its casual mention has stamped no idea upon our
brain. There are few, even among those least susceptible of thought
and emotion, in whose hearts and minds the first death in the family
does not act as a powerful revelation of the mysteries of life, and of
their own being; there are few who, after such a catastrophe, do not
look upon the world and the world's ways, at least for a time, with
changed and tempered feelings. It recalls the past; it makes us ponder
over the future; and youth, gay and light-hearted youth, is taught,
for the first time, to reg