Sir Robert was moving towards the door, when her hand motioned him back.
"Promise--promise that you will never force her to wed that
man!--more--that you yourself will break the contract!"
"Truly, and solemnly do I swear, that I will never force her to
fulfil--nay, that I will never even urge her to its fulfilment."
The dying lady looked unsatisfied, and some unpronounced words agitated
her lips, as Constance entered unbidden, but most welcome. She knelt by
her mother's side, and took the hand so feebly but affectionately
extended towards her. The fearful change that had occurred during her
short absence was but too visible. The breath that touched her cheek was
cold as the morning mist. The sufferer would have folded her hands in
prayer, but the strength had departed before the spirit was gone.
Constance, seeing that the fine expression of life with which her
upturned eyes had glittered was gradually passing away, clasped her
mother's hands within her own: suddenly they struggled for freedom, and
as her eye followed the pointing of her parent's finger, she saw the
lamp's last beam flicker for a moment, and then expire!--Her mother,
too, was dead!
* * * * *
It is ill to break upon the solitude of the dying, though it is good to
enter into the solemn temple of death; it is a sad but a useful lesson
to lift the pall; to raise the coffin-lid; to gaze upon all we loved,
upon all that was bright, and pure, and beautiful, changing with a slow
but certain change to decay and corruption. The most careless cannot
move along the chamber of death without being affected by the awful
presence of the King of Terrors. The holy quiet that ought to
characterise a funeral procession is too frequently destroyed by the
empty pomp and heartlessness which attend it; but in the death-chamber
there is nothing of this; the very atmosphere seems impregnated with the
stillness of the time when there was no life in the broad earth, and
when only "God moved on the face of the waters." Our breath comes slowly
and heavily to our lips, and we murmur forth our words as if the spirit
watched to record them in the unchanging book of immortality.
In due time, the funeral train of Lady Cecil prepared to escort the
corpse to its final home. Sir Robert was too ill, and too deeply
afflicted to be present at the ceremony; and as he had no near relative,
Sir Willmott Burrell of Burrell, the knight to whom his daughter's hand
was plighted, was expected to take his station as chief mourner. The
people waited for some hours with untiring patience; the old steward
paced backwards and forwards from the great gate, and at last took his
stand there, looking out from between its bars, hoping that, wild and
reckless as Burrell really was, he would not put so great an affront
upon the Cecil family, as to suffer its late mistress to go thus
unhonoured to the grave.