faith.
And through the broken vault the gleam of the Star of Bethlehem.

I was glad in a sort of agony when it was over. So long as it remained to
be done, something of the catastrophe was still suspended. Now it was all
over.

The house so strangely empty. No owner--no master! I with my strange
momentary liberty, bereft of that irreplaceable love, never quite prized
until it is lost. Most people have experienced the dismay that underlies
sorrow under such circumstances.

The apartment of the poor outcast from life is now dismantled. Beds and
curtains taken down, and furniture displaced; carpets removed, windows open
and doors locked; the bedroom and anteroom were henceforward, for many a
day, uninhabited. Every shocking change smote my heart like a reproach.

I saw that day that Cousin Monica had been crying for the first time, I
think, since her arrival at Knowl; and I loved her more for it, and felt
consoled. My tears have often been arrested by the sight of another person
weeping, and I never could explain why. But I believe that many persons
experience the same odd reaction.

The funeral was conducted, in obedience to his brief but peremptory
direction, very privately and with little expense. But of course there was
an attendance, and the tenants of the Knowl estate also followed the hearse
to the mausoleum, as it is called, in the park, where he was laid beside my
dear mother. And so the repulsive ceremonial of that dreadful day was over.
The grief remained, but there was rest from the fatigue of agitation, and a
comparative calm supervened.

It was now the stormy equinoctial weather that sounds the wild dirge of
autumn, and marches the winter in. I love, and always did, that grand
undefinable music, threatening and bewailing, with its strange soul of
liberty and desolation.

By this night's mail, as we sat listening to the storm, in the drawing-room
at Knowl, there reached me a large letter with a great black seal, and a
wonderfully deep-black border, like a widow's crape. I did not recognise
the handwriting; but on opening the funereal missive, it proved to be from
my uncle Silas, and was thus expressed:--

'MY DEAREST NIECE,--This letter will reach you, probably, on the day which
consigns the mortal remains of my beloved brother, Austin, your dear
father, to the earth. Sad ceremony, from taking my mournful part in which
I am excluded by years, distance, and broken health. It will, I trust, at
this seas