ugh for his own ears to hear the sound.
And then he uttered phrases which were almost fantastic in their woe,
but which declared what was and had been the condition of his mind
towards her since she had become so inexpressibly dear to him. "My
wife," he said, "my own one! Mother of my children. My woman; my
countess; my princess. They should have seen. They should have
acknowledged. They should have known whom it was that I had brought
among them;--of what nature should be the woman whom a man should set
in a high place. I had made my choice;--and then that it should come
to this!" "There is no good to be done," he said again. "It all turns
to ashes and to dust. The low things of the world are those which
prevail." "Oh, Marion, that I could be with you! Though it were to
be nowhere,--though the great story should have no pathetic ending,
though the last long eternal chapter should be a blank,--still to
have wandered away with you would have been something." As soon as
he reached his house he walked straight into the drawing-room, and
having carefully closed the door, he took the poker in his hand and
held it clasped there as something precious. "It is the only thing
of mine," he said, "that she has touched. Even then I swore to
myself that this hearth should be her hearth; that here we would
sit together, and be one flesh and one bone." Then surreptitiously
he took the bit of iron away with him, and hid it among his
treasures,--to the subsequent dismay of the housemaid.

There came to him a summons from the Quaker to the funeral, and on
the day named, without saying a word to any one, he took the train
and went down to Pegwell Bay. From the moment on which the messenger
had come from Mrs. Roden he had dressed himself in black, and he now
made no difference in his garments. Poor Zachary said but little to
him; but that little was very bitter. "It has been so with all of
them," he said. "They have all been taken. The Lord cannot strike
me again now." Of the highly-born stranger's grief, or of the cause
which brought him there, he had not a word to say; nor did Lord
Hampstead speak of his own sorrow. "I sympathize and condole with
you," he said to the old man. The Quaker shook his head, and after
that there was silence between them till they parted. To the few
others who were there Lord Hampstead did not address himself, nor did
they to him. From the grave, when the clod of earth had been thrown
on it, he walked slowly aw