ain rushed hurriedly into the chamber, but too late.
The great physician of souls had already put his beloved to sleep,--the
blessed sleep, whose dream is of love on earth, and whose waking is
in heaven. The great high priest of the sons and daughters of men had
anointed her with the oil of his mercy, and sent his blessed angels to
lead her to the mansions of everlasting rest.

The stroke fell like the stunning blow of a hammer upon the heart of
Pierre. He had, indeed, foreseen her death, but tried in vain to realize
it. He made no outcry, but sat still, wrapped in a terrible silence as
in the midst of a desert. He held fast her dead hands, and gazed upon
her dead face until the heart-breaking sobs of Heloise, and the appeals
of Mere Esther, roused him from his stupor.

He rose up, and, lifting Amelie in his arms, laid her upon a couch
tenderly and reverently, as a man touches the holiest object of his
religion. Amelie was to him a sacrament, and in his manly love he
worshipped her more as a saint than as a woman, a creation of heavenly
more than of earthly perfections.

Pierre bent over her and closed for the last time those dear eyes which
had looked upon him so pure and so lovingly. He embraced her dead form,
and kissed those pallid lips which had once confessed her unalterable
love and truth for Pierre Philibert.

The agitated nuns gathered round them at the news of death in the
Convent. They looked wonderingly and earnestly at an exhibition of such
absorbing affection, and were for the most part in tears. With some of
these gentle women this picture of true love, broken in the midst of its
brightest hopes, woke sympathies and recollections which the watchful
eye of Mere Migeon promptly checked as soon as she came into the parlor.

The Lady Superior saw that all was over, and that Pierre's presence
was an uneasiness to the nuns, who glanced at him with eyes of pity and
womanly sympathy. She took him kindly by the hand, with a few words of
condolence, and intimated that, as he had been permitted to see the end,
he must now withdraw from those forbidden precincts and leave his lost
treasure to the care of the nuns who take charge of the dead.

CHAPTER LIV. "THE MILLS OF GOD GRIND SLOWLY."

Pierre was permitted to see the remains of his affianced bride interred
in the Convent chapel. Her modest funeral was impressive from the number
of sad, sympathizing faces which gathered around her grave.

The quiet fi