'Well, it must be a blessed thing to end by drowning or blowing up, to save one's friends trouble.'

'Edgar, indeed I cannot bear this! Recollect what a treasure that dear shattered earthen vessel has held. What a wonderful life of patient silent resignation it was!'

'Indeed it was,' said Edgar, suddenly softened. 'No lips could tell what the resolution must have been that carried her through those years, never murmuring. What must she not have spared my father! Such devotion is the true woman's heritage.'

Cherry was soothed as she saw the dew on his eye-lashes, but just then Felix came in to fetch him, and, stooping down, kissed her, and said in his low and tender but strong voice, 'We leave her with him, dear child. Recollect—

'"The heart may ache, but may not burst;
Heaven will not leave thee, nor forsake."'

Much as Geraldine had longed for Edgar, his words brought vague yearning and distress, while Felix's very tone gave support. How could Edgar say patient silent self-devotion was not to be found except in woman?

So the worn-out body that once had been bright smiling Mary Underwood was borne to the church she had not entered since she had knelt there with her husband; and then she was laid beside him in the hill-side cemetery, the graves marked by the simple cross, for which there had been long anxious saving, the last contribution having been a quarter of the Bishop's gift to Lancelot. The inscription was on the edges of the steps, from which the cross rose—

UNDER WODE, UNDER RODE.
EDWARD FULBERT UNDERWOOD,
Nine Years Curate of this Parish,
Epiphany, 1855,
AGED 40.
'Thy Rod and Thy Staff comfort me.'

There was room enough for the name of Mary Wilmet, his wife, to be added at the base of the Rood, that Cross which they had borne, the one so valiantly, the other so meekly, during their 'forty years in the wilderness.'

Many persons were present out of respect not only to the former Curate, but to his hard-working son and daughter, and not only the daughter's holly-wreath, but one of camellias sent by Sister Constance, lay upon the pall. When the mourners had turned away, Mr. Audley saw a slender lad standing by, waiting till the grave was smoothed to lay on it a wreath of delicate white roses and ferns. There was no mistaking the clear olive face; and indeed Mr. Audley had kept up a regular correspondence with Ferdinand Travis, and knew that the vows made two years ago had been so far persevered in, and without molestation from father or uncle. He had written an account of Mrs. Underwood's death, but had received no answer.