Of hope, life, there was none.

They dug the hole deep and well; working with fierce energy to quench
thought and remorse. Once or twice her father asked for brandy, which
Ellinor, reassured by the apparently good effect of the first dose,
brought to him without a word; and once at her father's suggestion she
brought food, such as she could find in the dining-room without
disturbing the household, for Dixon.

When all was ready for the reception of the body in its unblessed grave,
Mr. Wilkins bade Ellinor go up to her own room--she had done all she
could to help them; the rest must be done by them alone. She felt that
it must; and indeed both her nerves and her bodily strength were giving
way. She would have kissed her father, as he sat wearily at the head of
the grave--Dixon had gone in to make some arrangement for carrying the
corpse--but he pushed her away quietly, but resolutely--

"No, Nelly, you must never kiss me again; I am a murderer."

"But I will, my own darling papa," said she, throwing her arms
passionately round his neck, and covering his face with kisses. "I love
you, and I don't care what you are, if you were twenty times a murderer,
which you are not; I am sure it was only an accident."

"Go in, my child, go in, and try to get some rest. But go in, for we
must finish as fast as we can. The moon is down; it will soon be
daylight. What a blessing there are no rooms on one side of the house.
Go, Nelly." And she went; straining herself up to move noiselessly, with
eyes averted, through the room which she shuddered at as the place of
hasty and unhallowed death.

Once in her own room she bolted the door on the inside, and then stole to
the window, as if some fascination impelled her to watch all the
proceedings to the end. But her aching eyes could hardly penetrate
through the thick darkness, which, at the time of the year of which I am
speaking, so closely precedes the dawn. She could discern the tops of
the trees against the sky, and could single out the well-known one, at a
little distance from the stem of which the grave was made, in the very
piece of turf over which so lately she and Ralph had had their merry
little tea-making; and where her father, as she now remembered, had
shuddered and shivered, as if the ground on which his seat had then been
placed was fateful and ominous to him.

Those below moved softly and quietly in all they did; but every sound had
a significant and terrible