a grievous loss to him, coming too in the full bloom of her beauty and prosperity, when he was conscious of having dealt severely with her foibles.  All was at an end—­that double thread of brilliant good-nature and worldly selfishness, with the one strand of sound principle sometimes coming into sight.  The life was gone from the earth in its incompleteness, without an unravelling of its complicated texture, and the wandering utterances that revealed how entirely the brother stood first with her, added poignancy to his regret for having been harsh with her.  It could hardly be otherwise than that his censures, however just, should now recoil upon him, and in vain did Rachel try to point out that every word of his sister’s had proved that her better sense had all along acquiesced—­he only felt what it might have been if he had been more indulgent and less ironical, and gave himself infinitely harder measure than he ever could have shown to her.  It was long before the suffering, either mental or bodily, by any means abated, and Rachel felt extremely lonely, deserted, and doubtful whether she were in any way ministering to his relief, but at last a gleam of satisfaction came upon her.  He evidently did like her attendance on him, and he began to say something about Bessie’s real love and esteem for her—­softer grief was setting in, and the ailment was lessening.

The summer morning was advancing, and the knell rung out its two deep notes from the church tower.  Rachel had been dreading the effect on him, but he lay still, as if he had been waiting for it, and was evidently counting the twenty-three strokes that told the age of the deceased.  Then he said he was mending, and that he should fall asleep if Rachel would leave him, see after the poor child, and if his uncle should not come home within the next quarter of an hour take measures to silence the bell for the morning service; after which, he laid his injunctions on her to rest, or what should he say to her mother?  And the approach to a smile with which these last words were spoken, enabled Rachel to obey in some comfort.

After satisfying herself that the child was doing well, Rachel was obliged to go into her former room, and there to stand face to face with the white, still countenance so lately beaming with life.  She was glad to be alone.  The marble calm above all counteracted and drove aside the painful phantom left by Lovedy’s agony, and yet the words of that poor, persecuted, suffering child came surging into her mind full of peace and hope.  Perhaps it was the first time she had entered into what it is for weak things to confound the wise, or how things hidden from the intellectual can be revealed to babes; and she hid her face in her hands, and was thankful for the familiar words of old, “That we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”

The continued clang of the bell warned her.  She looked round at the still uncleared room, poor Bessie’s rings and bracelets lying mingled with her own on the toilet table, and her little clock, Bessie’s own gift, standing ticking on as it had done at her peaceful rising only yesterday morning.