ad ventured all this for a lifeless corpse!
He did not mention Josephine, but asked me to come to them at once, as
he was obliged to go to Washington. I could not, for I was too ill to
travel without a certainty of being quite useless at my journey's end. I
could but just sit up. Five days after, I had an incoherent sobbing sort
of letter from Mrs. Bowen, to say that they had arranged to have the
funeral at Ridgefield the next day but one,--that Josephine would come
out, with her, the night before, and directly to my house, if I was able
to receive them. I sent word by the morning's mail that I was able, and
went myself to the station to meet them.

They had come alone, and Josey preceded her mother into the little room,
as if she were impatient to have any meeting with a fresh face over. She
was pale as any pale blossom of spring, and as calm. Her curls, tucked
away under the widow's-cap she wore, and clouded by the mass of crape
that shrouded her, left only a narrow line of gold above the dead quiet
of her brow. Her eyes were like the eyes of a sleep-walker: they seemed
to see, but not to feel sight. She smiled mechanically, and put a cold
hand into mine. For any outward expression of emotion, one might have
thought Mrs. Bowen the widow: her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, her
nose was red, her lips tremulous, her whole face stained and washed with
tears, and the skin seemed wrinkled by their salt floods. She had cried
herself sick,--more over Josephine than Frank, as was natural.

It was but a short drive over to my house, but an utterly silent one.
Josephine made no sort of demonstration, except that she stooped to pat
my great dog as we went in. I gave her a room that opened out of mine,
and put Mrs. Bowen by herself. Twice in the night I stole in to look at
her: both times I found her waking, her eyes fixed on the open window,
her face set in its unnatural quiet; she smiled, but did not speak. Mrs.
Bowen told me in the morning that she had neither shed a tear nor slept
since the news came; it seemed to strike her at once into this cold
silence, and so she had remained. About ten, a carriage was sent over
from the village to take them to the funeral. This miserable custom of
ours, that demands the presence of women at such ceremonies, Mrs. Bowen
was the last person to evade; and when I suggested to Josey that she
should stay at home with me, she looked surprised, and said, quietly,
but emphatically, "Oh, no!"

A