nd, during this time,
she told them where she would like to be buried.

On a little knoll, she said, which lay to the right of the house,
barely two hundred yards from the window. Here the grass grew shorter
and closer than elsewhere, and here freshened more rapidly beneath the
autumn rains. Here, on winter's evenings, the slanting sunbeams
lingered longest, and here, at such times, she had been accustomed to
saunter, listening to the sighing of the wind, in the dark funeral
sheoaks and cypresses, like the far-off sea upon a sandy shore. Here,
too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock of lories, making the dark low
trees gay with flying living blossoms. And here she would lie with her
feet towards the east, her sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean
which she would never cross again.

One fresh spring morning she sat up and talked serenely to Mrs.
Buckley, about matters far higher and more sacred than one likes to
deal with in a tale of this kind, and, after a time, expressed a wish
for a blossom of a great amaryllis which grew just in front of her
window.

Mrs. Buckley got the flower for her, and so holding the crimson-striped
lily in her delicate, wasted fingers, the good old lady passed from
this world without a struggle, as decently and as quietly as she had
always lived in it.

* * * * *

This happened when Charles was about ten years old, and, for some time,
the lad was subdued and sad. He used to look out of the window at night
towards the grave, and wonder why they had put her they all loved so
well, to lie out there under the wild-sweeping winter rain. But, by
degrees, he got used to the little square white railing on the sheoak
knoll, and, ere half a year was gone, the memory of his aunt had become
very dim and indistinct.

Poor Mary, too, though a long while prepared for it, was very deeply
and sincerely grieved at Miss Thornton's death; but she soon recovered
from it. It came in the course of nature, and, although the house
looked blank and dull for a time, yet there was too much life all
around her, too much youthful happy life, to make it possible to dwell
very long on the death of one who had left them full of years and
honour. But Lord Frederick, before spoken of incidentally in this
narrative, playing billiards at Gibraltar, about a year after this; had
put into his hand a letter, from which, when opened, there fell a lock
of silver grey hair on the green cloth, which he carefully picked up