that,
though they lie so still, mayhap they know what we do--and how they are
spoken of as nothings whom live men and women but wait a moment to thrust
away, that their own living may go on again in its accustomed way, or
perchance more merrily. If my lord knows aught, he will be grateful that
I watch by him to-night in this solemn room. He was ever grateful, and
moved by any tenderness of mine."

'Twas as she said, the room was solemn, and this almost to awfulness. It
was a huge cold chamber at best, and draped with black, and hung with
hatchments; a silent gloom filled it which made it like a tomb. Tall wax-
candles burned in it dimly, but adding to its solemn shadows with their
faint light; and in his rich coffin the dead man lay in his shroud, his
hands like carvings of yellowed ivory clasped upon his breast.

Mistress Anne dared not have entered the place alone, and was so overcome
at sight of the pinched nostrils and sunk eyes that she turned cold with
fear. But Clorinda seemed to feel no dread or shrinking. She went and
stood beside the great funeral-draped bed of state on which the coffin
lay, and thus standing, looked down with a grave, protecting pity in her
face. Then she stooped and kissed the dead man long upon the brow.

"I will sit by you to-night," she said. "That which lies here will be
alone to-morrow. I will not leave you this last night. Had I been in
your place you would not leave me."

She sat down beside him and laid her strong warm hand upon his cold waxen
ones, closing it over them as if she would give them heat. Anne knelt
and prayed--that all might be forgiven, that sins might be blotted out,
that this kind poor soul might find love and peace in the kingdom of
Heaven, and might not learn there what might make bitter the memory of
his last year of rapture and love. She was so simple that she forgot
that no knowledge of the past could embitter aught when a soul looked
back from Paradise.

Throughout the watches of the night her sister sat and held the dead
man's hand; she saw her more than once smooth his grey hair almost as a
mother might have touched a sick sleeping child's; again she kissed his
forehead, speaking to him gently, as if to tell him he need not fear, for
she was close at hand; just once she knelt, and Anne wondered if she
prayed, and in what manner, knowing that prayer was not her habit.

'Twas just before dawn she knelt so, and when she rose and stood beside
hi