ss of passion!

But, shocked at the death of one so near to her he loved, he now feared
to read on; and cast his eyes from the tombs accidentally to the church.
Through the window of the chancel, his sight was struck with a tall
monument of large dimensions, raised since his departure, and adorned
with the finest sculpture. His curiosity was excited--he drew near, and
he could distinguish (followed by elegant poetic praise) "_To the memory
of John Lord Viscount Bendham_."

Notwithstanding the solemn, melancholy, anxious bent of Henry's mind, he
could not read these words, and behold this costly fabric, without
indulging a momentary fit of indignant laughter.

"Are sculpture and poetry thus debased," he cried, "to perpetuate the
memory of a man whose best advantage is to be forgotten; whose no one
action merits record, but as an example to be shunned?"

An elderly woman, leaning on her staff, now passed along the lane by the
side of the church. The younger Henry accosted her, and ventured to
inquire "where the daughters of Mr. Rymer, since his death, were gone to
live?"

"We live," she returned, "in that small cottage across the clover field."

Henry looked again, and thought he had mistaken the word _we_; for he
felt assured that he had no knowledge of the person to whom he spoke.

But she knew him, and, after a pause, cried--"Ah! Mr. Henry, you are
welcome back. I am heartily glad to see you, and my poor sister Rebecca
will go out of her wits with joy."

"Is Rebecca living, and will be glad to see me?" he eagerly asked, while
tears of rapture trickled down his face. "Father," he continued in his
ecstasy, "we are now come home to be completely happy; and I feel as if
all the years I have been away were but a short week; and as if all the
dangers I have passed had been light as air. But is it possible," he
cried to his kind informer, "that you are one of Rebecca's sisters?"

Well might he ask; for, instead of the blooming woman of seven-and-twenty
he had left her, her colour was gone, her teeth impaired, her voice
broken. She was near fifty.

"Yes, I am one of Mr. Rymer's daughters," she replied.

"But which?" said Henry.

"The eldest, and once called the prettiest," she returned: "though now
people tell me I am altered; yet I cannot say I see it myself."

"And are you all living?" Henry inquired.

"All but one: she married and died. The other three, on my father's
death, agreed to live together,