stood; the implements of needlework were about her, but her hand had fallen on her lap, and her eyes, fixed on the ground, showed by their vacancy that her thoughts wandered. Traces of care and watching had diminished her former attractions—but her simple dress and cap, her desponding attitude, and the single candle that cast its light upon her, gave for a moment a picturesque grouping to the whole. A fearful reality recalled me from the thought—a figure lay stretched on the bed covered by a sheet—her mother was dead, and Lucy, apart from all the world, deserted and alone, watched beside the corpse during the weary night. I entered the room, and my unexpected appearance at first drew a scream from the lone survivor of a dead nation; but she recognised me, and recovered herself, with the quick exercise of self-control habitual to her. “Did you not expect me?” I asked, in that low voice which the presence of the dead makes us as it were instinctively assume.
“You are very good,” replied she, “to have come yourself; I can never thank you sufficiently; but it is too late.”
“Too late,” cried I, “what do you mean? It is not too late to take you from this deserted place, and conduct you to—”
My own loss, which I had forgotten as I spoke, now made me turn away, while choking grief impeded my speech. I threw open the window, and looked on the cold, waning, ghastly, misshaped circle on high, and the chill white earth beneath—did the spirit of sweet Idris sail along the moon-frozen crystal air?—No, no, a more genial atmosphere, a lovelier habitation was surely hers!
I indulged in this meditation for a moment, and then again addressed the mourner, who stood leaning against the bed with that expression of resigned despair, of complete misery, and a patient sufferance of it, which is far more touching than any of the insane ravings or wild gesticulation of untamed sorrow. I desired to draw her from this spot; but she opposed