There was some question as to who should attend the funeral.  Henrietta shuddered and trembled all over as if it were a cruelty to mention it before her; but Frederick was very desirous that she should be there, partly from a sort of feeling that she would represent himself, and partly from a strong conviction that it would be good for her.  She was willing to do anything or everything for him, to make up for her day’s neglect:  and she consented, though with many tears, and was glad that at least Fred seemed satisfied, and her uncle looked pleased with her.

Aunt Geoffrey undertook to stay with Fred, and Henrietta, who clung much to Beatrice, felt relieved by the thought of her support in such an hour of trial.  She remembered the day when, with a kind of agreeable emotion, she had figured to herself her father’s funeral, little thinking of the reality that so soon awaited her, so much worse, as she thought, than what any of them could even then have felt; and it seemed to her perfectly impossible that she should ever have power to go through with it.

In was much, however, that she should have agreed to what in the prospect gave her so much pain; and perhaps, for that very reason, she found the reality less overwhelming than she had dreaded.  Seeing nothing, observing nothing, hardly conscious of anything, she walked along, wrapped in one absorbing sense of wretchedness; and the first words that “broke the stillness of that hour,” healing as they were, seemed but to add certainty to that one thought that “she was gone.”  But while the Psalms and the Lessons were read, the first heavy oppression of grief seemed in some degree to grow lighter.  She could listen, and the words reached her mind; a degree of thankfulness arose to Him Who had wiped away the tears from her mother’s eyes, and by Whom the sting of death had been taken away.  Yes; she had waited in faith, in patience, in meek submission, until now her long widowhood was over; and what better for her could those who most loved her desire, than that she should safely sleep in the chancel of the Church of her childhood, close to him whom she had so loved and so mourned, until the time when both should once more awaken,—­the corruptible should put on incorruption, the mortal should put on immortality, and death be swallowed up in victory.

Something of this was what Henrietta began to feel; and though the tears flowed fast, they were not the bitter drops of personal sorrow.  She was enabled to bear, without the agony she had expected, the standing round the grave in the chancel; nor did her heart swell rebelliously against the expression that it was “in great mercy that the soul of this our dear sister” was taken, even though she shrank and shivered at the sound of the earth cast in, which would seem to close up from her for ever the most loved and loving creature that she would ever know.  No, not for ever,—­might she too but keep her part in Him Who is the Resurrection and the Life—­might she be found acceptable in His sight, and receive the blessing to be pronounced to all that love and fear Him.