tore for
us)--whether unto any lasting use she prayed and reasoned with that
hard, dried heart, none but the Omniscient can tell. Let us hope: let us
hope; for the fretful voice was stilled, and the cloudy forehead
brightened, and the haggard eyes looked cheerfully to meet the
inevitable stroke of death. Thus in wisdom and in charity, in patience
and in faith, that gentle pair of lovers comforted the dying soul.

However, days rolled away, and Aunt Green lingered on still, tenaciously
clinging unto life: until one morning early, she felt so much better,
that she insisted on being propped up by pillows, and seeing all the
household round her bed to speak to them. So up came every one, in no
small hope of legacies, and what the lawyers call "_donationes mortis
causa_."

The general was at her bed's-head, with, I am ashamed to say, perhaps
unconsciously, a countenance more ridiculous than lugubrious; though he
tried to subdue the buoyancy of hope and to put on looks of decent
mourning; on the other side, the long-expectant legatee, Niece Jane,
prudently concealed her questionable grief behind a scented
pocket-handkerchief. Julian held somewhat aloof, for the scene was too
depressing for his taste: so he affected to read a prayer-book, wrong
way up, with his tongue in his cheek: Charles, deeply solemnized at the
near approach of death, knelt at the poor invalid's bedside; and Emily
stood by, leaning over her, suffused in tears. At the further corners of
the bed, might be seen an old servant or two; and Mrs. Green's butler
and coachman, each a forty years' fixture, presented their gray heads at
the bottom of the room, and really looked exceedingly concerned.

Mrs. Green addressed them first, in her feeble broken manner:
"Grant--and John--good and faithful--thank you--thank you both; and you
too, kind Mrs. Lloyd, and Sally, and nurse--what's-your-name: give them
the packets, nurse--all marked--first drawer, desk: there--there--God
bless you--good--faithful."

The old servants, full of sorrow at her approaching loss, were comforted
too: for a kind word, and a hundred pound note a-piece, made amends for
much bereavement: the sick-nurse found her gift was just a tithe of
their's, and recognised the difference both just and kind.

"Niece Jane--you've waited--long--for--this day: my will--rewards you."

"O dear--dear aunt, pray don't talk so; you'll recover yet, pray--pray
don't:" she pretended to drown the rest in sorrow, b