already so languidly creeps, rather than flows, through them!) her hands hanging lifelessly, one before her, the other grasped by the right-hand of the kind widow, whose tears bedewed the sweet face which her motherly boson supported, though unfelt by the fair sleeper; and either insensibly to the good woman, or what she would not disturb her to wipe off, or to change her posture:  her aspect was sweetly calm and serene:  and though she started now and then, yet her sleep seemed easy; her breath, indeed short and quick; but tolerably free, and not like that of a dying person.

In this heart-moving attitude she appeared to us when we approached her, and came to have her lovely face before us.

The Colonel, sighing often, gazed upon her with his arms folded, and with the most profound and affectionate attention; till at last, on her starting, and fetching her breath with greater difficulty than before, he retired to a screen, that was drawn before her house, as she calls it, which, as I have heretofore observed, stands under one of the windows.  This screen was placed there at the time she found herself obliged to take to her chamber; and in the depth of our concern, and the fulness of other discourse at our first interview, I had forgotten to apprize the Colonel of what he would probably see.

Retiring thither, he drew out his handkerchief, and, overwhelmed with grief, seemed unable to speak; but, on casting his eye behind the screen, he soon broke silence; for, struck with the shape of the coffin, he lifted up a purplish-coloured cloth that was spread over it, and, starting back, Good God! said he, what’s here?

Mrs. Smith standing next him, Why, said he, with great emotion, is my cousin suffered to indulge her sad reflections with such an object before her?

Alas!  Sir, replied the good woman, who should controul her?  We are all strangers about her, in a manner:  and yet we have expostulated with her upon this sad occasion.

I ought, said I, (stepping softly up to him, the lady again falling into a doze,) to have apprized you of this.  I was here when it was brought in, and never was so shocked in my life.  But she had none of her friends about her, and no reason to hope for any of them to come near her; and, assured she should not recover, she was resolved to leave as little as possible, especially as to what related to her person, to her executor.  But it is not a shocking object to her, though it be to every body else.

Curse upon the hard-heartedness of those, said he, who occasioned her to make so sad a provision for herself!—­What must her reflections have been all the time she was thinking of it, and giving orders about it?  And what must they be every time she turns her head towards it?  These uncommon genius’s—­but indeed she should have been controuled in it, had I been here.

The lady fetched a profound sigh, and, starting, it broke off our talk; and the Colonel then withdrew farther behind the screen, that his sudden appearance might not surprise her.