t. The gold weighed heavy on her mind. It did
not seem real, so strangely acquired, so mysteriously concealed. It
reminded her of the tales of the genii, more than of the actualities of
every day life. She prayed that Miss Thusa might live and take care of
it herself for long years to come.

Several times during the recital, she thought she heard a sound at the
window, but when she turned her head to ascertain the cause, she saw
nothing but the curtain slightly fluttering in the wind that crept in at
the opening, with a soft, sighing sound.

It was the first time she had ever watched with the sick, and she found
it a very solemn thing. Yet with all the solemnity and gloom brooding
over her, she felt inexpressible gratitude that she was not haunted by
the spectral illusions of her childhood. Reason was no longer the
vassal, but the monarch of imagination, and though the latter often
proved a restless and wayward subject, it acknowledged the former as
its legitimate sovereign.

Miss Thusa, lying so rigid and immovable on her back, with her hands
crossed on her breast, a white linen handkerchief folded over her head
and fastened under the chin, looked so resembling death, that it was
difficult to think of her as a living, breathing thing. Helen gazed upon
her with indescribable awe, sometimes believing it was nothing but
soulless clay before her, but even then she gazed without horror. Her
exceeding terror of death was gone, without her being conscious of its
departure. It was like the closing of a dark abyss--there was _terra
firma_, where an awful chasm had been. There was more terror to her in
the vitality burning in her own heart, than in that poor, enfeebled
form. How strong were its pulsations! how loud they sounded in the
midnight stillness!--louder than the death-watch that ticked by the
hearth. To escape from the beatings of "this muffled drum" of life, she
went to the window, and partly drawing aside the curtain, breathed on a
pane of glass, so that the gauzy web the frost had woven might melt away
and admit the vertical rays of the midnight moon. How beautiful, how
resplendent was the scene that was spread out before her! She had not
thought before of looking abroad, and it was the first time the solemn
glories of the noon of night had unfolded to her view. In the morning a
drizzling rain had fallen, which had frozen as it fell on the branches
of the leafless trees, and now on every little twig hung pendant
d