ted, caused her to shrink
from entering any habitation, except for the single night which
intervened, between the period of the father's leaving her and her
reaching the secret entrance to the Vale. Her wallet provided her with
more food than her parched throat could swallow; and for the consuming
thirst, the fresh streams that so often bubbled across her path, gave
her all she needed. The fellowship of man, then, was unrequited,
and, as the second night fell, so comparatively short a distance lay
between her and her home, that buoyed up by the desire to reach it,
she was not sensible of her utter exhaustion, till she stood within
the little graveyard of the Vale; and the moon shining softly and
clearly on the headstones, disclosed to her the grave of her husband.
She was totally ignorant that he had been borne there; and the rush
of feeling which came over her, as she read his name--the memories of
their happy, innocent, childhood, of all his love for her--that had he
been but spared, all the last year's misery might have been averted,
for she would have loved him, ay, even as he loved her; and he would
have guarded, saved--so overpowered her, that she had sunk down upon
the senseless earth which covered him, conscious only of the wild,
sickly longing, like him to flee away and be at rest. She had reached
her home; exertion no longer needed, the unnatural strength, ebbed
fast, and the frail tenement withered, hour by hour, away. And how
might Julien mourn! Her work on earth was done. Young, tried, frail
as she was, she had been permitted to show forth the glory, the
sustaining glory, of her faith, by a sacrifice whose magnitude was
indeed apparent, but whose depth and intensity of suffering, none knew
but Him for whom it had been made. She had been preserved from the
crime--if possible more fearful in the mind of the Hebrew than any
other--apostacy: and though the first conviction, that she was indeed
"passing away" even from his affection, was fraught with absolute
anguish, yet her uncle could not, dared not pray for life on earth.
And in the peace, the calm, the depth, of quietude which gradually
sunk on her heart, infusing her every word and look and gentle smile,
it was as if her spirit had already the foretaste of that blissful
heaven for which its wings were plumed. As the frame dwindled, the
expression of her sweet face became more and more unearthly in its
exquisite beauty, the mind more and more beatified, and