changing a look
with Aunt Merce; we both laughed. Veronica, lost in revery, paid no
attention to anything about her. I saw that Temperance suffered; she
was perplexed and irritated.

"Let Abram stay, if he likes," I whispered to her; "and be sure to
stay yourself, for you are needed."

She brightened with an expression of gratitude. "He is a nuisance,"
she whispered back; "but as I made a fool of myself, I must be
punished according to my folly. I'll stay, you may depend. I'll do
_everything_ for you. I vow I am mad, that I ever went away."

"Have the neighbors gone?" I asked.

"There's a couple or so round, and will be, you know. I'll take Verry
to bed, and sleep on the floor by her. You go to your father."

He was in their bedroom, on the bed. She was lying on a frame of wood,
covered with canvas, a kind of bed which went from house to house in
Surrey, on occasions of sickness or death.

"Our last night together has passed," he said in a tremulous voice,
while scanty tears fell from his seared eyes. "The space between then
and now--when her arm was round me, when she slept beside me, when I
woke from a bad dream, and she talked gently close to my face, till
I slept again--is so narrow that I recall it with a sense of
reality which agonizes me; it is so immeasurable when I see her
there--_there_, that I am crushed."

If I had had any thought of speaking to him, it was gone. And I must
go too. Were the hands folded across her breast, where I, also, had
slept? Were the blue eyes closed that had watched me there? I should
never see. A shroud covered her from all eyes but his now. Till I
closed the door upon him, I looked my last farewell. An elderly woman
met me as I was going upstairs, and offered me a small packet; it was
her hair. "It was very long," she said. I tried in vain to thank her.
"I will place it in a drawer for you," she said kindly.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The house was thronged till after the funeral. We sat in state, to be
condoled with and waited upon. Not a jot of the customary rites
was abated, though I am sure the performers thereof had small
encouragement. Veronica alone would see no one; her room was the only
one not invaded; for the neighbors took the house into their hands,
assisted by that part of the Morgesons who were too distantly related
to consider themselves as mourners to be shut up with us. It was put
under rigorous funeral law, and inspected from garret to cellar. They
s