instantly to their former
position, -- "she has done her work. She has begun upon her
rest. I have reason to thank God that ever she lived. -- I
shall see the day when I can quietly thank him that she has
died."

Elizabeth trembled, and in her heart prayed Winthrop not to
say another word.

"Does not this face look, Miss Haye, as if its once owner had
'entered into peace?'"

If worlds had depended on Elizabeth's answering, she could not
have spoken. She could not look at the eye which, she knew, as
this question was put, sought hers; her own rested only on the
hand that was moving back those golden locks, and on the white
brow it touched; she dared not stir. The contact of those two,
and the signification of them, was as much as she could bear,
without any help. She knew his eye was upon her.

"Isn't it worth while," he said, "to have such a sure foothold
in that other world, that the signal for removing thither
shall be a signal of _peace?_"

Elizabeth bowed her head low in answer.

"Have you it?" was his next question. He had left the bed's
side and stood by hers.

Elizabeth wrung her hands and threw them apart with almost a
cry, -- "Oh I would give uncounted worlds if I had! --"

And the channel being once opened, the seal of silence and
reserve taken off, her passion of feeling burst forth into
wild weeping that shook her from head to foot. Involuntarily
she took hold of the bedpost to stay herself, and clung to it,
bending her head there like a broken reed.

She felt even at the time, and remembered better afterwards,
how gently and kindly she was drawn away from there and taken
back into the other room and made to sit down. She could do
nothing at the moment but yield to the tempest of feeling, in
which it seemed as if every wind of heaven shook her by turns.
When at last it had passed over, the violence of it, and she
took command of herself again, it was even then with a very
sobered and sad mind. As if, she thought afterwards, as if
that storm had been, like some storms in the natural world,
the forerunner and usher of a permanent change of weather. She
looked up at Winthrop, when she was quieted and he brought her
a glass of water, not like the person that had looked at him
when she first came in. He waited till she had drunk the water
and was to appearance quite mistress of herself again.

"You must not go yet," he said, as she was making some
movement towards it; -- "you are cold. You must