Loudly Mrs. Hamilton deplored her loss, shutting herself up in her room, and refusing to see any one, saying that she could not be comforted, and it was of no use trying!  Lenora, however, managed to find an opportunity of whispering to her that it would hardly be advisable to commit suicide, since she had got the homestead left, and everything else for which she had married Mr. Hamilton.

“Lenora, how can you thus trifle with my feelings?  Don’t you see that my trouble is killing me?” said the greatly distressed lady.

“I don’t apprehend any such catastrophe as that,” answered Lenora.  “You found the weeds of Widow Carter easy enough to wear, and those of Widow Hamilton won’t hurt you any worse, I imagine.”

“Lenora,” groaned Mrs. Hamilton, “may you never know what it is to be the unhappy mother of such a child!”

“Amen!” was Lenora’s fervent response, as she glided from the room.

For three days the body of Mr. Hamilton lay upon the marble center table in the darkened parlor.  Up and down the long staircases, and through the silent rooms, the servants moved noiselessly.  Down in the basement Aunt Polly forgot her wonted skill in cooking, and in a broken rocking-chair swayed to and fro, brushing the big tears from her dusky face, and lamenting the loss of one who seemed to her “just like a brother, only a little nigher.”

In the chamber above, where six weeks before Carrie had died, sat Margaret—­not weeping; she could not do that—­her grief was too great, and the fountain of her tears seemed scorched and dried; but, with white, compressed lips, and hands tightly clasped, she thought of the past and of the cheerless future.  Occasionally through the doorway there came a small, dark figure; a pair of slender arms were thrown around her neck, and a voice murmured in her ear:  “Poor, poor Maggie.”  The next moment the figure would be gone, and in the hall below Lenora would be heard singing snatches of some song, either to provoke her mother, or to make the astonished servants believe that she was really heartless and hardened.

What Walter suffered could not be expressed.  Hour after hour, from the sun’s rising till its going down, he sat by his father’s coffin, unmindful of the many who came in to look at the dead, and then gazing pitifully upon the face of the living, walked away, whispering mysteriously of insanity.  Near him Lenora dared not come, though through the open door she watched him, and oftentimes he met the glance of her wild, black eyes, fixed upon him with a mournful interest; then, as if moved by some spirit of evil, she would turn away, and seeking her mother’s room, would mock at that lady’s grief, advising her not to make too much of an effort.

At last there came a change.  In the yard there was the sound of many feet, and in the house the hum of many voices, all low and subdued.  Again in the village of Glenwood was heard the sound of the tolling bell; again through the garden and over the running water brook moved the long procession to the graveyard; and soon Ernest Hamilton lay quietly sleeping by the side of his wife and children.