though they
feared that time or change should make them less beloved one to another;
or since that could never be, that any evil should rise up to separate
them even for one day; and so they went and lay down side by side in the
green churchyard, where none could seek them out, to trouble the silent
love they knew would live beyond the grave. My father died the first,
and my mother laid her head upon his heart, when it ceased to beat, and
never lifted it again; and so they buried them just as they were, and
she lies there still, most sweetly sleeping. She said, just before she
expired, that his heart had been her resting-place in life, and should
be so in death; and so it was, and is even yet, a blessed rest.--Is it
not, dear uncle?"

He almost crushed her hand in his, and said, "Tell me no more of them,
Lilias, I cannot bear it;" he was thinking how the proud feet of his
disdainful wife would spurn the turf from his unhappy grave.

Lilias thought it pained him to hear of the brother's death whom he had
so loved, and therefore gently changing the subject, she began to tell
him of her own happy childhood and youth--how she had lived with her
good old grandfather, the pastor of a country village, roaming the hills
all day a free and joyous child, and in the evening sitting by his side,
gaining from him all needful learning, and many tender counsels to
smooth her path in life: and how the one bright lesson he had ever
taught her was to have deep faith in the love and goodness pervading all
things inwardly, even as beauty clothes the world outwardly; to believe
that however dark, and bitter, and mysterious might seem the destinies
of man, yet all has a merciful purpose, and shall have a joyous ending,
if only we will have patience, and hope, and loving-kindness one towards
another; and how she was to fear nothing on this earth, not pain, nor
sorrow, nor death, for that all these were tender messengers working
their work of mercy; and how she never was to suspect evil or to look
for it in others, but ever to seek only that which was good and pure in
them, for that there is not in the world a soul, however stained, but
has some fair spot lingering from the brightness with which it was
clothed when it came forth--a new-created spirit, bright as a star. So
she spoke, telling her gentle, happy ideas in a sweet murmuring voice,
and Sir Michael felt, with every word she uttered, that from this wise
and beautiful teaching she had