"My mother's!" cried Aura gladly, "Oh! may I have it, grandfather?"
Ted looked with distaste at the little mourning ring; just a plait of bronze brown hair like Aura's set in a plain gold rim as a background to "In Memoriam" in black enamel letters.
"It is rather grisly," he whispered fondly as he slipped it on to the girl's finger, "but it will do to--to keep the place warm! By and by it shall be diamonds."
She shook her head. "I shall like this best," she said, "it will remind me of----" And then she lifted her finger to her lips and kissed the little ring. It would be hers always to remind her of Love and Death, and Birth that came between the two.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
Poor Gwen's death had caused quite a pleasurable excitement in the village.
There can be no question that to all save the immediate few whose natural emotions are involved, most deaths bring a quicker tide of life to the living.
It has been said, indeed, that funerals are often the preludes to marriage. Be that as it may, Gwen, despite her gift of grace, had lived all her short life on such a different plane from the rest of the village girls that, except in the little shepherd's cottage amid the hills, few real tears were shed over her dramatic death.
And it was so dramatic! To die in full song--to shed her life-blood in trying to bring the glad news to other souls. Surely that must avail! Surely that sacrifice must turn those sinful souls to peace.
Though they did not know it, and for Mr. Sylvanus Smith's prospect of peace, it was as well he did not, both Aura and her grandfather were special objects of intercession at many hundreds of chapels the very next Sunday. For the story naturally grew in the telling.