I looked earnestly at Lucy’s sweet countenance, and saw it was full of concern—­I had almost said of alarm.

“I believe I understand you, Lucy,” I answered, though a sensation at the throat nearly choked me—­“Rupert is here?”

“He is, Miles; I implore you to remember what would be the wishes of her who is now a saint in heaven—­what her entreaties, her tears would implore of you, had not God placed a barrier between us.”

“I understand you, Lucy”—­was the husky reply—­“I do remember all you wish, though that recollection is unnecessary.  I would rather not see him; but never can! forget that he is your brother!”

“You will see as little of him as possible, Miles—­bless you, bless you, for this forbearance!”

I felt Lucy’s hasty but warm kiss on my forehead as she quitted the room.  It seemed to me a seal of a compact between us that was far too sacred ever to allow me to dream of violating it.

I pass over the details of the funeral procession.  This last was ordered as is usual in the country, the friends following the body in vehicles or on horseback, according to circumstances.  John Wallingford went with me agreeably to my own arrangement, and the rest took their places in the order of consanguinity and age.  I did not see Rupert in the procession at all, though I saw little beside the hearse that bore the body of my only sister.  When we reached the church-yard, the blacks of the family pressed forward to bear the coffin into the building.  Mr. Hardinge met us there, and then commenced those beautiful and solemn rites which seldom fail to touch the hardest heart.  The rector of St. Michael’s had the great excellence of reading all the offices of the church as if he felt them; and, on this occasion, the deepest feelings of the heart seemed to be thrown into his accents.  I wondered how he could get on; but Mr. Hardinge felt himself a servant of the altar, standing in his master’s house, and ready to submit to his will.  Under such circumstances it was not a trifle that could unman him.  The spirit of the divine communicated itself to me.  I did not shed a tear during the whole of the ceremony, but felt myself sustained by the thoughts and holy hopes that ceremony was adapted to inspire.  I believe Lucy, who sat in a far corner of the church, was sustained in a similar manner; for I heard her low sweet voice mingling in the responses.  Lip service!  Let those who would substitute their own crude impulses for the sublime rites of our liturgy, making ill digested forms the supplanter of a ritual carefully and devoutly prepared, listen to one of their own semi-conversational addresses to the Almighty over a grave, and then hearken to these venerable rites, and learn humility.  Such men never approach sublimity, or the sacred character that should be impressed on a funeral ceremony, except when they borrow a fragment here and there from the very ritual they affect to condemn.  In their eagerness to dissent, they have been guilty of the weakness of dissenting, so far as forms are concerned, from some of the loftiest, most comprehensive, most consolatory and most instructive passages of the inspired book!