, many faces--all their eyes looking; and where is
he?--why doesn't he look? Oh! Miss Sandbrook, don't bring that young
lady here--I know--I know it is why he never comes--keep her away--'

The voice turned to shrieking sobs. There were sounds of feet and
hurried movements, and Owen came out, gasping for breath, and his face
flushed. 'I can't bear it,' he said, with his hands over his face.

'Can I be of use?' asked Robert.

'No; the nurse can hold her;' and he leant his arms on the mantelpiece,
his frame shaken with long-drawn sobs. He had never even seen his
sister, and she was too much appalled to speak or move.

When the sounds ceased, Owen looked up to listen, and Robert said, 'Still
no consciousness?'

'No, better not. What would she gain by it?'

'It must be better not, if so ordained,' said Robert.

'Pshaw! what are last feelings and words? As if a blighted life and such
suffering were not sure of compensation. There's more justice in Heaven
than in your system!'

He was gone; and Robert with a deep sigh said, 'I am not judging. I
trust there were tokens of repentance and forgiveness; but it is painful,
as her mother feels it, to hear how her mind runs on light songs and
poetry.'

'Mechanically!'

'True; and delirium is no criterion of the state of mind. But it is very
mournful. In her occupation, one would have thought habit alone would
have made her ear catch other chimes.'

Lucilla remembered with a pang that she had sympathized with Edna's
weariness of the monotony of hymn and catechism. Thinking poetry rather
dull and tiresome, she had little guessed at the effect of sentimental
songs and volumes of L. E. L. and the like, on an inflammable mind, when
once taught to slake her thirsty imagination beyond the S.P.C.K. She did
not marvel at the set look of pain with which Robert heard passionate
verses of Shelley and Byron fall from those dying lips. They must have
been conned by heart, and have been the favourite study, or they could
hardly thus recur.

'I must go,' said Robert, after a time; 'I am doing no good here. You
will take care of your brother, if it is over before I return. Where are
you?'

'My things are in Woolstone-lane.'

'I meant to get him there. I will come back by seven o'clock; but I must
go to the school.'

'May I go in there?'

'You had better not. It is a fearful sight, and you cannot be of use. I
wish you could be out of hearing; but the house is ful