“Gone!—where?—with her husband?”
“Don’t you know, sir,” said she, with a quiet solemnity, that made me shudder with dreadful anticipations. “If you will come with me, I will show you.”
I dared not ask the awful question, “Is she dead?” I took my gentle guide by the hand, and suffered her to lead me slowly through the village. Neither of us spoke. We had almost attained to the end of the hamlet, when my sad guide gently plucked me by the arm to turn down to the right.
“No,” said I, tremulously, “that is not the way; we must go forward. That lane leads to the churchyard.”
“And to Mrs Cherfeuil.”
“Go on, and regard me not.”
In another minute we were both sitting on a newly-made grave, the little girl weeping in the innocent excess of that sorrow that brings its own sweet relief.
My at first low and almost inaudible murmurs gradually grew more loud and more impassioned. At last they aroused the attention of my weeping companion, and she said to me, artlessly, “It is of no use taking on in this way, sir; she can never speak up from the grave. She is in heaven now; and God does not permit any of His blessed saints to speak to us sinners below.”
“You are quite right, my good girl,” said I, ashamed of this betrayal of my emotion. “It is very foolish indeed to be talking to the dead over their damp graves, and not at all proper. But I have a great fancy to stay here a little while by myself. Pray go and wait for me at the end of the lane. I will not keep you long, and I have something to say to you.”
“I will do as you tell me, sir, most certainly. I will tell you all about her death, for I was a sort of help to the nurse. I know you now, sir, and thought I knew you from the first.”