The doctor looked up with mild reproach in his eyes.

“She has something far better than the flowers of this world,” he said.  “If ever a dead face told of rest and peace, hers does; I have never seen such a smile on any other.”

“I should like to find her a grave where the sun shines and the dew falls,” observed Lord Charlewood—­“where grass and flowers grow and birds sing in the trees overhead.  She would not seem so far away from me then.”

“You can find many such graves in the pretty church-yard here in Castledene,” said the doctor.

“In time to come,” continued Lord Charlewood, “she shall have the grandest marble monument that can be raised, but now a plain white cross will be sufficient, with her name, Madaline Charlewood; and, doctor, while I am away you will have the grave attended to—­kept bright with flowers—­tended as for some one that you loved.”

Then they went out together to the green church-yard at the foot of the hill, so quiet, so peaceful, so calm, and serene, that death seemed robbed of half its terrors; white daisies and golden buttercups studded it, the dense foliage of tall lime-trees rippled above it.  The graves were covered with richly-hued autumn flowers; all was sweet, calm, restful.  There was none of earth’s fever here.  The tall gray spire of the church rose toward, the clear blue sky.

Lord Charlewood stood looking around him in silence.

“I have seen such a scene in pictures,” he said.  “I have read of such in poems, but it is the first I have really beheld.  If my darling could have chosen for herself, she would have preferred to rest here.”

On the western slope, where the warmest and brightest sun beams lay, under the shade of the rippling lime-trees, they laid Lady Charlewood to rest.  For long years afterward the young husband was to carry with him the memory of that green grassy grave.  A plain white cross bore for the present her name; it said simply: 

In Loving Memory of
Madaline Charlewood,
who died in her 20th year. 
Erected by her sorrowing husband.

“When I give her the monument she deserves,” he said.  “I can add no more.”

They speak of that funeral to this day in Castledene—­of the sad, tragic story, the fair young mother’s death, the husband’s wild despair.  They tell how the beautiful stranger was buried when the sun shone and the birds sang—­how solemnly the church-bell tolled, each knell seeming to cleave the clear sunlit air—­how the sorrowing young husband, so suddenly and so terribly bereft, walked first, the chief mourner in the sad procession; they tell how white his face was, and how at each toll of the solemn bell he winced as though some one had struck him a terrible blow—­how he tried hard to control himself, but how at the grave, when she was hidden forever from his sight, he stretched out his hands, crying, “Madaline, Madaline!” and how for the remainder of that day he shut himself up alone, refusing to hear the sound of a voice, to look at a human face—­refusing food, comfort, grieving like one who has no hope for the love he had lost.  All Castledene grieved with him; it seemed as though death and sorrow had entered every house.