en? Of
course it was not open; and if it had been, Theo could not possibly
leave Oxford till next morning. But then it was a well-known fact that
mamma was excitable, and often did things without thought. He lingered
all night, "just alive, and that is all," the doctor said. It was Chatty
who sent for the rector, who came and read the prayers for the sick at
the bedside, but agreed with Dr. Durant that it was of no use attempting
to rouse the departing soul from the lethargy in which he lay. And before
Theodore arrived all was over. He knew it before he entered the house by
the sight of the drawn blinds, which received him with a blank whiteness
of woe as soon as he caught sight of the windows. They had not sent to
meet him at the station, thinking he would not come till the later
train.

"Try and get mamma to lie down," Minnie said, as she kissed her brother.
"She is going on exciting herself for nothing. I am sure everything was
done that could be done, and we can do him no good by making ourselves
more miserable now."

Minnie had cried in the early morning as much as was right and
natural,--her eyes were still a little red; but she did not think it
necessary to begin over again, as Chatty did, who had a tendency to
overdo everything, like mamma. As for Theodore, he did not cry at all,
but grew very pale, and did not say a word when he was taken into the
chamber of death. The sight of that marble, or rather waxen, figure
lying there had a greater effect upon his imagination than upon that
of either of the girls, who perhaps had not got much imagination to be
affected. He was overawed and silenced by that presence, which he had
never met before so near. When his mother threw herself into his arms,
with that excess of emotion which was peculiar to her, he held her close
to him with a throb of answering feeling. The sensation of standing
beside that which was not, although it was, his father, went through
and through the being of the sensitive young man. Death is always most
impressive in the case of a commonplace person, with whom we have no
associations but the most ordinary ones of life. What had come to
him?--to the mind which had been so much occupied with the quality of his
beef-tea? Was it possible that he could have leaped all at once into the
contemplation of the highest subjects, or must there not be something
intermediate between the beef-tea and the _Gloria in Excelsis_? This
was the thought, inappropriate,