ted to show you this, Henrietta." And he took up a
book where he had marked a passage for her. She saw several paper marks
in some other books, and perceived with shame that he had been reading
yesterday, and choosing out what might comfort her, his selfish sister,
as she could not help feeling herself.

And here was the first great point gained, though there was still
much for Henrietta to learn. It was the first time she had ever been
conscious of her own selfishness, or perhaps more justly, of her
proneness to make all give way to her own feeling of the moment.

CHAPTER XIX.

There was some question as to who should attend the funeral. Henrietta
shuddered and trembled all over as if it were a cruelty to mention it
before her; but Frederick was very desirous that she should be there,
partly from a sort of feeling that she would represent himself, and
partly from a strong conviction that it would be good for her. She was
willing to do anything or everything for him, to make up for her day's
neglect: and she consented, though with many tears, and was glad that at
least Fred seemed satisfied, and her uncle looked pleased with her.

Aunt Geoffrey undertook to stay with Fred, and Henrietta, who clung much
to Beatrice, felt relieved by the thought of her support in such an hour
of trial. She remembered the day when, with a kind of agreeable emotion,
she had figured to herself her father's funeral, little thinking of the
reality that so soon awaited her, so much worse, as she thought,
than what any of them could even then have felt; and it seemed to her
perfectly impossible that she should ever have power to go through with
it.

In was much, however, that she should have agreed to what in the
prospect gave her so much pain; and perhaps, for that very reason,
she found the reality less overwhelming than she had dreaded. Seeing
nothing, observing nothing, hardly conscious of anything, she walked
along, wrapped in one absorbing sense of wretchedness; and the first
words that "broke the stillness of that hour," healing as they were,
seemed but to add certainty to that one thought that "she was gone." But
while the Psalms and the Lessons were read, the first heavy oppression
of grief seemed in some degree to grow lighter. She could listen, and
the words reached her mind; a degree of thankfulness arose to Him Who
had wiped away the tears from her mother's eyes, and by Whom the sting
of death had been taken away. Yes