felt the pulse, but she could not satisfy herself
whether it beat or not; she rubbed the cold hand between both her own,
and again and again started with the hope that the long black eyelashes
were being lifted from the white cheek, or that she saw a quivering of
lip or nostril. All this while her thoughts were straying miles away,
and yet so wondrously and painfully present. As she thought of her Uncle
Frederick, and, as it were, realized his death, which had happened so
nearly in this same manner, she experienced a sort of heart-sinking
which would almost make her believe in a fate on the family. And that
Fred should be cut off in the midst of an act of disobedience, and she
the cause! O thought beyond endurance! She tried to pray for him, for
herself, for her aunt, but no prayer would come; and suddenly she found
her mind pursuing Willy, following him through all the gates and gaps,
entering the garden, opening the study door, seeing her father's sudden
start, hearing poor Henrietta's cry, devising how it would be broken to
her aunt; and again, the misery of recollecting her overpowered her,
and she gave a groan, the very sound of which thrilled her with the hope
that Fred was reviving, and made her, if possible, watch with double
intenseness, and then utter a desponding sigh. She wished it was she who
lay there, unconscious of such exceeding wretchedness, and, strange
to say, her imagination began to devise all that would be said were it
really so; what all her acquaintance would say of the little Queen Bee,
how soon Matilda St. Leger would forget her, how long Henrietta would
cherish the thought of her, how deeply and silently Alex would grieve.
"He would be a son to papa," she thought; but then came a picture of her
home, her father and mother without their only one, and tears came into
her eyes, which she brushed away, almost smiling at the absurdity of
crying for her own imagined death, instead of weeping over this but too
positive and present distress.

There was nothing to interrupt her; Fred lay as lifeless as before,
and not a creature passed along the lonely road. The frosty air was
perfectly still, and through it sounded the barking of dogs, the tinkle
of the sheep-bell, the woodsman's axe in the plantations, and now and
then the rattle of Dumple's harness, as she shook his head or shifted
his feet at the gate where he had been left standing. The rooks wheeled
above her head in a clear blue sky, the little