“Is Miss Adams at home?” inquired her uncle of a woman leaning against the door of a miserable house.

“I don’t know; she went to the hospital this morning; but I’m not sure she’s in; it’s the second pair back; it’s easy known, for the sob has not ceased in that room these two nights; some people do take on so”—­

Charles Adams did not hear the concluding sentence, but sought the room; the door would not close, and he heard a low sobbing sound from within; he paused, but his step had aroused the mourner—­“Come in, Mary; come in; I know how it is,” said a young voice; “he is dead; one grave for mother and son—­one grave for mother and son!  I see your shadow, dark as it is; have you brought a candle?  It is very fearful to be alone with the dead—­even one’s own mother—­in the dark.”

Charles Adams entered the room; but his sudden appearance in the twilight, and evidently not knowing him, overcame the girl, his youngest niece, so much, that she screamed, and fell on her knees by her mother’s corpse.  He called for lights, and was speedily obeyed, for he put a piece of gold in the woman’s hand.  She turned it over, and as she hastened from the room, muttered, “If this had come sooner, she’d not have died of starvation or burdened the parish for a shroud; it’s hard the rich can’t look to their own.”

When Mary returned, she was fearfully calm.  “No, her brother was not dead,” she said; “the young were longer dying than those whom the world had worn out; the young knew so little of the world, they thought it hard to leave it;” and she took off her bonnet, and sat down; and while her uncle explained why he had not written, she looked at him with eyes so fixed and cold, that he paused, hoping she would speak, so painful was their stony expression; but she let him go on, without offering one word of assurance of any kind feeling or remembrance; and when she stooped to adjust a portion of the coarse plaiting of the shroud—­that mockery of “the purple and fine linen of living days”—­her uncle saw that her hair, her luxuriant hair, was striped with white.

“There is no need for words now,” she said at last; “no need.  I thought you would have sent; she required but little—­but very little; the dust rubbed from the gold she once had would have been riches:  but the little she did require she had not, and so she died; but what weighs heaviest upon my mind was her calling so continually on my father, to know why he had deserted her:  she attached no blame latterly to any one, only called day and night upon him.  Oh! it was hard to bear—­it was very hard to bear.”

“I will send a proper person in the morning to arrange that she may be placed with my brother,” said Charles.

Mary shrieked almost with the wildness of a maniac.  “No, no; as far from him as possible!  Oh! not with him!  She was to blame in our days of splendour as much as he was; but she could not see it; and I durst not reason with her.  Not with him! She would disturb him in his grave!”