ghed and waved his hand.

'Be off to your carriage!'

Jessie moved to the door reluctantly; but he did not turn again, and she
departed.

CHAPTER XIX

THE COMPLETION OF MISCHANCE

Upon Emily had fallen silence. The tongue which for three months had
incessantly sounded in her ears, with its notes of wailing, of
upbraiding, of physical pain, of meaningless misery, was at rest for
ever. As she stood beside the grave--the grave whose earth had not had
time to harden since it received her father--she seemed still to hear
that feeble, querulous voice, with its perpetual iteration of her own
name; the casting of clay upon the coffin made a sound not half so real.
Returning home, she went up to the bedroom with the same hurried step
with which she had been wont to enter after her brief absences. The bed
was vacant; the blind made the air dim; she saw her breath rise before
her.

There remained but a little servant-girl, who, coming to the
sitting-room to ask about meals, stood crying with her apron held to her
eyes. Emily spoke to her almost with tender kindness. Her own eyes had
shed but few tears; she only wept on hearing those passages read which,
by their promise of immortal life, were to her as mockery of her grief.
She did not venture to look into the grave's mouth she dreaded lest
there might be visible some portion of her father's coffin.

Mrs. Baxendale, the Cartwrights, and one or two other friends had
attended the funeral. At Emily's request no one accompanied her home.
Mrs. Baxendale drove her to the door, and went on to Dunfield.

The last link with the past was severed--almost, it seemed, the last
link with the world. A sense of loneliness grew about her heart; she
lived in a vast solitude, whither came faintest echoes of lamentation,
the dying resonance of things that had been. It could hardly be called
grief, this drawing off of the affections, this desiccation of the
familiar kindnesses which for the time seemed all her being. She forced
herself to remember that the sap of life would flow again, that love
would come back to her when the hand of death released her from its
cruel grip; as yet she could only be sensible of her isolation, her
forlorn oneness. It needs a long time before the heart can companion
only with memories. About its own centre it wraps such warm folds of
kindred life. Tear these away, how the poor heart shivers in its
nakedness.

She was alone. It no longer mattered where