'
'How came she to die--and away from home?' murmured Knight.
'Don't you see, sir, she fell off again afore they'd been married
long, and my lord took her abroad for change of scene. They were
coming home, and had got as far as London, when she was taken very
ill and couldn't be moved, and there she died.'
'Was he very fond of her?'
'What, my lord? Oh, he was!'
'VERY fond of her?'
'VERY, beyond everything. Not suddenly, but by slow degrees.
'Twas her nature to win people more when they knew her well. He'd
have died for her, I believe. Poor my lord, he's heart-broken
now!'
'The funeral is to-morrow?'
'Yes; my husband is now at the vault with the masons, opening the
steps and cleaning down the walls.'
The next day two men walked up the familiar valley from Castle
Boterel to East Endelstow Church. And when the funeral was over,
and every one had left the lawn-like churchyard, the pair went
softly down the steps of the Luxellian vault, and under the low-
groined arches they had beheld once before, lit up then as now.
In the new niche of the crypt lay a rather new coffin, which had
lost some of its lustre, and a newer coffin still, bright and
untarnished in the slightest degree.
Beside the latter was the dark form of a man, kneeling on the damp
floor, his body flung across the coffin, his hands clasped, and
his whole frame seemingly given up in utter abandonment to grief.
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