the lips smiled, though languidly yet as sunnily as ever; the dark hair lay in wavy lines along the sides of her face; and but for the helplessness with which the figure rested in the chair, there was less outward token of suffering than he had often seen about her,—­more appearance almost of youth and beauty.  But it was not an earthly beauty; there was something about it which filled him with a kind of indescribable undefined awe, together with dread of a sorrow towards which he shrank from looking.  She thought him fatigued with the exertion he had made, and allowed him to rest, while she contemplated with pleasure even the slight advances which he had already made in shaking off the traces of illness.

The silence was not broken till Aunt Geoffrey came in, just as the last stroke of the Church-bell died away, bringing in her hand a fragrant spray of the budding sweet-briar.

“The bees are coming out with you, Freddy,” said she.  “I have just been round the garden watching them revelling in the crocuses.”

“How delicious!” said Mrs. Frederick Langford, to whom she had offered the sweet-briar.  “Give it to him, poor fellow; he is quite knocked up with his journey.”

“O no, not in the least, mamma, thank you,” said Fred, sitting up vigorously; “you do not know how strong I am growing.”  And then turning to the window, he made an effort, and began observing on her rook’s nest, as she called it, and her lilac buds.  Then came a few more cheerful questions and comments on the late notes, and then Mrs. Frederick Langford proposed that the reading of the service should begin.

Aunt Geoffrey, kneeling at the table, read the prayers, and Fred took the alternate verses of the Psalms.  It was the last day of the month, and as he now and then raised his eyes to his mother’s face, he saw her lips follow the glorious responses in those psalms of praise, and a glistening in her lifted eyes such as he could never forget.

“He healeth those that are broken in heart, and giveth medicine to heal their sickness.”

“He telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names.”

He read this verse as he had done many a time before, without thinking of the exceeding beauty of the manner in which it is connected with the former one; but in after years he never read it again without that whole room rising before his eyes, and above all his mother’s face.  It was a sweet soft light, and not a gloom, that rested round that scene in his memory; springtide sights and sounds; the beams of the declining sun, with its quiet spring radiance; the fresh mild air; even the bright fire, and the general look of calm cheerfulness which pervaded all around, all conduced to that impression which never left him.

The service ended, Aunt Geoffrey read the hymn for the day in the “Christian Year,” and then left them for a few minutes; but strange as it may seem, those likewise were spent in silence, and though there was some conversation when she returned, Fred took little share in it.  Silent as he was, he could hardly believe that he had been there more than ten minutes, when sounds were heard of the rest of the family returning from Church, and Mrs. Geoffrey Langford went down to meet them.