en
the light departed, and death alone was left, though the eyes retained a
consciousness. They seemed to try to turn to Garda, who was still
kneeling with her head hidden against her mother's shoulder.

"Take her in your arms, Garda," whispered Margaret; "your face is the
last she wishes to see."

Winthrop had summoned Dr. Kirby; the other friends came softly in. For
twenty minutes more the slow breaths came and went, but with longer and
longer intervals between. Garda, lying beside her mother, held her in
her arms, and the dying woman's fixed eyes rested on her child's for
some time; then consciousness faded, the lids drooped. Garda put her
warm cheek against the small white face, and, thus embraced, the
mother's earthly life ebbed away, while in the still room ascended, in
the voice of the clergyman, the last prayer--"O Almighty God, with whom
do live the spirits of men after they are delivered from their earthly
prisons, we humbly commend to Thee the soul of this thy servant, our
dear sister--" Our dear sister; they were all there, her Gracias
friends--Mrs. Kirby, Mrs. Carew, Mrs. Moore, Madam Giron, Madam
Ruiz--and they all wept for her as though she had been a sister indeed.
In the hall outside, at the open door, stood handsome Manuel, not
ashamed of his tears; and near him, more devout as well as more
self-controlled, knelt Torres, reverently waiting, with head turned
away, for the end.

Dr. Kirby laid the little hand he had been holding, down upon the
coverlet. "She has gone," he said, in a low voice. And, with a visible
effort to control his features, he passed round to the other side of the
bed, and lifting Garda tenderly, tried to draw her away. But Garda clung
to the dead, and cried so heart-brokenly that all the women, with fresh
tears starting at the desolate sound--that sound of audible sobbing
which first tells those outside the still room that the blow has
fallen--all the women came one by one and tried to comfort her. But it
was not until Margaret Harold took her in her arms that she was at all
quieted.

"Come with me, Garda," she said. "You are not leaving your mother alone,
your mother is not here; she has gone home to God. Come with me;
remember she wished it." And Garda yielded.

They buried Mrs. Thorne in the family burying-ground at East Angels (the
one of which she had spoken), her daughter and her friends following, on
foot, the coffin, borne on the shoulders of eight of their former
sla