y parted back her hair from
her forehead.

"Don't disturb her," I whispered, "she is asleep; surely she is asleep!"

He paused before he answered me, and placed his hand on her heart. Then
softly drew up the bed-linen, till it hid her face.

"Yes, she is asleep," he said gravely; "asleep, never to wake again. She
is dead."

I turned aside my head in silence, for my thoughts, at that moment, were
not the thoughts which can be spoken by man to man.

"This has been a sad scene for any one at your age," he resumed kindly,
as he left the bedside, "but you have borne it well. I am glad to see
that you can behave so calmly under so hard a trial."

Calmly?

Yes! at that moment it was fit that I should be calm; for I could
remember that I had forgiven her.

VIII.

On the fourth day from the morning when she had died, I stood alone in
the churchyard by the grave of Margaret Sherwin.

It had been left for me to watch her dying moments; it was left for me
to bestow on her remains the last human charity which the living can
extend to the dead. If I could have looked into the future on our fatal
marriage-day, and could have known that the only home of my giving which
she would ever inhabit, would be the home of the grave!--

Her father had written me a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and
which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these pages.
Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave the action
by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me and upon my
family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and disgust of
his wife's surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some pecuniary
reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had declared he would
accuse her, of having been the real cause of her mother's death; and
that he took care to give the appearance of sincerity to the indignation
which he professed to feel against her, by refusing to follow her
remains to the place of burial.

Ralph had returned to London, as soon as he received the letter from Mr.
Bernard which I had forwarded to him. He offered me his assistance
in performing the last duties left to my care, with an affectionate
earnestness that I had never seen him display towards me before. But Mr.
Bernard had generously undertaken to relieve me of every responsibility
which could be assumed by others; and on this occasion, therefore, I had
no need to put my brother's ready kindness in help